


Queens of The Glade

by Littlestsociopath



Series: Queens of The Glade [1]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 48,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlestsociopath/pseuds/Littlestsociopath
Summary: ---This is inspired by/based on the TikTok series by rachelwingsit. Although all events and characterisation are not the same.---In The Glade the world doesn't work like it did before, not that anyone in The Glade would remember it to know so. The Glade is the world as far as The Gladers know, this is the world, this is life, and they have figured out how to navigate that to the best of their abilities. But in a world basically filled with men, Cleo and Marie navigate the world of The Glade together with a wisdom and power that lets them live up to their names.
Series: Queens of The Glade [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129442
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

The expanse of The Glade is barely comprehendible for the most part, a piece of land that contains the ability to sustain life for a group of people who don’t even know how they got there. The Gladers are not much more than a bunch of children in circumstance, placed without memory or understanding into a life that they don’t know but without anything to contrast it with. The ability to survive in this place is almost considered pure luck. The construction of huts for shelter, the aggregation of workers and assignments to construct a life that feels somewhat like living, the way the gardeners keep consistent, the way the builders keep working, and the way the runners keep coming back… It is pure luck really. A world one could consider unfair or too harsh for children to face alone, is the only world they know, yet they believe in another, like a faded memory.  
The Glade is filled with different people, a diversity of character and contradiction, of followers and leaders. People with different skills and different lives they don’t remember, different histories and hopes, all living together in one place. If it wasn’t so dystopian it would almost be idyllic.  
In the only piece of construction above ground level, not much more than a few pieces of wood, woven together and placed on the flattest branch of the tallest tree in the glade, with a few pieces of wood held at each side to pull the woven fabric sides and roof together, creating an almost tent like structure in the centre of a tree, sits Cleo.  
Cleo is one of the older residents of The Glade, one of the two residing females in a world dominated by boys, which is exactly why as soon as each month more and more boys arrived, she demanded that her residents be moved to higher ground. Alby her oldest companion was happy to oblige, most the boys often were. There was a way with Cleo, that she could ask for most things and not many would argue with her, whether the obedience was out of admiration or intimidation wasn’t always clear, but when Cleo was the only girl in The Glade for so long, it was easier to just listen to her.  
Cleo sits in her ‘watch tower’ as Ma had often so fondly called it, and watched as the boys started to hurry around their morning. She is waiting, somewhat impatiently, to start an argument.  
Minho steps out into the morning sunlight and Cleo moves away from the cloth wall of her watch tower, pretending she wasn’t watching. She can hear his chuckle under his breathe as he approaches. “You should come down you know, Fry won’t be able to function without your help today,” Minho says.  
“I am not the cook,” Cleo points out as she climbs down the rope ladder and lands on the glassy floor beneath.  
“No, but you should be,” Minho laughs.  
“I am supportive, yes that means I can cook, I can act as medic, but those aren’t my jobs. Ma is Med-jack, so maybe if someone actually put more effort into finding her, instead of shucking around out there, then I wouldn’t have to fix people up every time a builder misjudges a situation,” Cleo snaps. Minho retracts slightly, he is not used to getting any tone from Cleo. Cleo is often much more put together than this, she is intelligent and specific in all she does, she wants to be taken seriously and respected and for those things to occur she acts a certain way. But today she is at the end of her thread. Today even Minho, one of her closest friends, isn’t safe from her anger.  
“Are you going to threaten to go find her yourself again?” Minho asks, a little jovial, barely masking his genuine concern for her safety. Most the Gladers wouldn’t put any salt to Cleo threats to leave The Glade and head into The Maze, but Minho is one of maybe three who actually are aware of exactly how far Cleo is willing to go.  
“If that’s what it takes to get them to listen,” Cleo says emphasising a space between every word, more to try and regulate her tone than for any other reason.  
“You were watching for Gally, weren’t you?” Minho asks.  
“Alby says he is done discussing this with me, that I am not a Runner, that I am not a map recorder, that I am not the leader, and I have said more than my piece,” Cleo says, kicking up dirt as the two of them head further into the centre.  
“You know we are all worried-,”  
“Don’t try that Minho, we aren’t, some of us have given up entirely,” Cleo points out.  
“Gally,” he sighs.  
“Gally thinks he has more power than me in this situation, I want to prove that he is wrong,” Cleo says picking up the pace on Minho, like she ever actually stood a chance of going at a pace he couldn’t keep up with.  
Gally is one of the few people in The Glade who is less obedient to Cleo’s authority. Everyone takes Alby’s word, accepts him as leader, because he was the first, he was alone, and he survived, he figured out The Glade, he started something. And despite Cleo’s seniority on most The Gladers here, Gally still doesn’t give her even close to the same amount of respect. Cleo has plenty of ideas as to why that is, but they don’t talk about it. At all. Ever. 

Alby saw the argument ready to boil over a mile away, the way Cleo was barely inches from Gally’s face and angry, the way Gally was caught between laughing and tension. Alby would say that Cleo was very much like a cat, not that he could remember ever seeing a cat, or owning one, but the concept was so deeply rooted in his mind he was sure he must have had one. She was fierce and she was independent, she acted like she needed no one, and no permission from anyone, yet she always found a way to get what she wanted, and when faced with a situation where she wouldn’t, like now, she might break things.  
“Cleo,” Alby’s voice cut through the two arguing like a knife, and they both fell silent. Cleo taking an offensive stance more in Alby’s direction now, and Gally visibly relaxing as Cleo pulled out of his close proximity. Not that he would care to admit it, but Cleo made Gally nervous, and often angry, but mostly nervous.  
“Do you respect me at all Alby?” Cleo asks, the question to most seemingly coming out of nowhere, but Alby had felt it coming for a while. Marie, the other girl in The Glade, Cleo’s best friend, and The Glade’s best Med-jack has been missing for five days, for reasons unbeknown to anyone it seems she walked out into The Maze one morning, alone and without saying a word, and no one has found her. Not for lack of trying, those who ventured into The Maze looked low and high but Ma seemed to be nowhere. But Cleo wasn’t accepting that, not now, not anytime, and Alby’s attempts to sway her have only made her more determined.  
“Since the first Griever attack Cleo, you have had nothing but my respect,” Alby says. 

_-Flashback-  
Alby is stood by The Maze entrance, two other boys are dragging a third in from The Maze, darkness is falling and the boy being carried is wailing in pain. All nine Gladers crowd around and Alby attempts to push Cleo away from the scene, a protective move that backfires instantly.  
“What the hell Alby, I can help,” Cleo says, tearing some cloth from her ragged shirt and starting to pull the cloth into bandage strips. The boy seems to have a large gash on his side and an injury to his leg that needs to be patched up. Alby looks back at her, concerned.  
“Look, there is a lot of blood, you might not want to be here for this part,” Alby tries. Cleo laughs, Alby has only known Cleo a month but he has yet to hear her laugh, it is a laugh of reproach, but a laugh none the less.  
“Alby, I came into this world covered in blood, I will likely leave this world covered in blood, if you think blood scares me, you don’t know me at all,” she says pushing through the huddle of boys to attend to the injured. Alby smiles, nodding in spite of himself.  
“Okay.”_

__“Then you believe me when I say that I will go out there and find her myself if you don’t do something,” Cleo says. Alby sighs again, trying not to meet Cleo’s eye. Alby knows that he can’t be the good guy in this, that Minho is on her side and even though he isn’t saying it, Newt is also on her side, and that gives Cleo all the power she needs to know she is right, not that she ever needed reassurance from anyone else to believe that. But Alby also knows he can’t do more than he has done.  
“You have to accept at some point-,” Alby starts.  
“I have to accept Shuck-all Alby, shuck-all” Cleo says and walks away. Alby looks at Gally who is watching her walk away, looking overly satisfied with himself.  
“Pretend to care,” Alby tells Gally.  
“I do care,” Gally says, slightly offended by the notion he doesn’t, “Ma is one of us, I always look out for all of us, it is rough to lose anyone, I just refuse to further risk more Gladers on a tragic but essentially lost cause.”  
“And you like to see Cleo mad,” Minho mumbles.  
“Look I am sorry your crush ran into The Maze-,” Gally starts. Minho stands up straighter, and cuts him off midsentence.  
“Wow, don’t start that again. Ma is one of us,” Minho says.  
“A pretty one of us, as I am sure you have noticed,” Gally says.  
“The girls are off limits, you all know that,” Alby says turning back to the others to talk through the plans. Today they will get a new Glader. It has got almost everyone’s focus. Some are using it to distract from both Ma going missing and the recent loss of a runner to The Maze.  
Cleo stands by the trees, looking at the boys working the crops and Newt approaches her slowly, she senses him, she always does, and she tries to not smile in the slightest. That could give her away, and heaven forbid she ever suggest she had favouritism.  
“Any cookies today?” Newt asks, a peace offering of an opening sentence. Cleo feels her pocket, three oat cookies to be exact, she manages to sneak one or two extra out of the mixture she makes every day, and she slips them in the pockets of her favourites. Newt is one of those favourites. But so is Ma, and Ma’s assigned cookies are what remain in her pocket.  
“I haven’t even gotten to the kitchen Newt, it isn’t my job,” she reminds him.  
“No, seems your job is making trouble,” he jokes. There is faint smile on his lips to let her know he is on her side, and she knows but she looks away. Cleo always finds it hard to look at Newt for too long, like it tugs on something inside her, something she refuses to look at. “I heard Gally decided to pick a fight.”  
“You know that’s not what happened, and I am not falling into that trap,” Cleo says.  
“You are way too smart for that, aren’t you?” he says.  
“Smarter than almost everyone here,” she says.  
“Not really a fair sample,” he says.  
“You remember anyone smarter?” she asks.  
“You know I don’t, I just assume,” he says.  
“I don’t think they’re looking in the right places Newt,” Cleo says after a while of silence.  
“They are trying their best, we miss her too.”  
“I swear, if you try to tell me-,”  
“I wouldn’t dare.”  
There is an unspoken thing that lingers in the air around people who keep secrets from each other, they know it’s there, it is heavy enough on both shoulders, cold enough to both their senses, to know it is there. They acknowledge it in silence. Like the things they want to say but can’t, it remains unsaid, it remains lingering. There is something in the air whenever Newt and Cleo are near each other, maybe it is just a side effect of The Glade, of close proximity over long periods of time. Maybe it is something from the memories neither can remember. Or maybe something more, maybe something less. Regardless it is there in each moment, and now it feels heavier on both shoulders than ever before. It is the reason Newt walks away without another word to go about his tasks. It is the reason that Cleo pulls in a staggering breath once he is out of sight. The reason she takes his words as an answer to a question she never asked him, his silence was permission, his joint sadness was an understanding. That feeling, that lingering weight is the reason without another word she grabs her whittled bottle filled with rain water from its branch on her tree and walks the long way around The Glade. A timing carefully thought-out, as by the time she reaches the entrance to The Maze all The Gladers are focused on the Greenie coming up in the box, so no one sees her slip away._ _


	2. Chapter 2

Cleo often feels the need to remind the boys that she isn’t their caregiver, she isn’t a med-jack even though she was one of the first capable, she isn’t a cook, even though she was one of the first who could. She was not given those roles, even though she offered to take them. Instead, she was given a different role, a role she took was grace and ease. She is Keeper of the Fire, Alby had once joked she would have been Keeper of the Peace if she wasn’t so antagonistic, to which Cleo had pointed out the only antagonistic one was Gally, to which he conceded. What Keeper of the Fire means she makes sure the nights despite the cold aren’t empty, the fire is always lit and there is always something to keep sprits up, and for The Glade that is usually stories, or songs. Cleo remembered songs before she remembered her own name, Shanty’s mostly, and although not the perfect vocalist the boys were calmed by songs around the bonfire, it became a way to end the days, and when Marie came up in the box, things started to fall into place. Marie knew stories, and her stories reminded Cleo of more stories and they would tell stories and sing around the fire. For Cleo that was enough. Marie also insisted on tending to the wounded, becoming a Med-jack, and Cleo had a strange ability to make things better than they were, so would slip into the kitchen to make oat and water into something resembling a sweet treat, though she would never tell anyone how, and she would occasionally actually assist Frypan with the cooking. But rarely.  
Since Ma has been gone, there have been no songs around the bonfire, she has refused. For she believed that she shouldn’t have to do her job, if the runners clearly weren’t doing theirs. She didn’t want to put it all on Minho, Cleo knew Minho was doing his best and when he said he was looking, she believed him, she knew he meant it. Her trust in Minho to do all he could to find her, was almost unparalleled. Cleo understood that Minho cared for Marie, in a way that means he would keep his promises.  
Cleo couldn’t have been wandering The Maze for more than two hours when she heard it, quietly at first, a whisper on the wind, but still there. Crying. Like a small child, young, lost, scared. Something inside her set on fire, and she lurched in the direction of the sound, only stopping herself by physically gripping on the vines that grow up the tall walls of The Maze, she held herself still despite all her desire to run to the sound. Reason took over, why would there be a small child crying in The Maze? Cleo recalls the story of The Labyrinth, one she had decided upon remembering to not share with the boys around the fire, the story of a maze with a monster inside, that people were trapped in as punishment and left to be picked off one by one. She remembers how the labyrinth would play tricks on the mind, sometime it would play on your fears, your insecurities making you try to run scared, sometimes it would draw you in. The labyrinth faked women’s laughter, and screams of dying men… how far could a small child’s tears be from that?  
The crying got louder but no other sound, no footsteps, no movement. There was no way it could be real, but it felt real. The tugging feeling in her chest pulling her to help, was very real.  
“Oh, you hear a lot of stories,” Cleo starts to sing to herself, to drown out the crying, to ground herself. The Gladers learnt the hard way that it wasn’t a good idea to be loud in The Maze, that grievers may come out at night, but The Maze was still a dangerous place in the day. But for some reason, singing never bothered The Maze. Cleo used to sit in the early months, by the entrance and sing, hoping the boys would come back safe. The days she sung, nothing bad seemed to happen. No one was as superstitious about it as Cleo in those early months, she felt it soothed The Maze. She stopped after the first boy got stung. “bout the sailors and their sport.” She continued her path through The Maze, singing as she moved and the crying stopped, The Maze stopped haunting her steps. “About how every sailor has a girl in every port.” She notices the walls of The Maze suddenly bare of greenery, like something cut it down. “But if you added two and two, you'd figure out right quick,” her voice starts to trail off as she notices a hole in the wall, like a doorway but crumbled in on itself, collapsed.  
“It's just because the girls all have a lad on every ship,” comes a voice from inside.  
“Ma?” Cleo asks aloud.  
“Cleo?” Ma’s voice responds. Relief hits Cleo in a wave as she pulls the rubble back to slip into the gap in The Maze wall. She finds herself in a small hollowed out section of The Maze wall, not bigger than expected but surprising in its existence as nothing every suggested the walls of The Maze were anything but solid. Yet a metal circular door is crushed under broken stone and Ma, sits amongst some greenery and fallen rocks. She is bleeding a little from a small cut on her head, she looks tired and lost but overall okay.  
“I knew I would find you,” Cleo says, rushing over to assess injuries.  
“I am mostly okay,” Ma laughs, coughing from the dust. Cleo pulls the cookies from her pocket and hands her the water bottle. Ma looks her up and down. “This makes three.”  
“Three what?” Cleo asks, wiping the blood from her head with a small piece of bandage.  
“Three times you’ve saved my life,” Marie says. Cleo rolls her eyes.  
“How do you figure that?” She says helping Ma to her feet. She limps slightly, a twisted ankle likely, and leans onto Cleo for support.  
“Well, you found me, that’s one.”  
“Yeah, I will give you that, I did what all the runners couldn’t, boys, what can you do with them?” Cleo tries to use humour to cover how relieved she is. She never wanted to doubt she would find Ma for even a moment, her heart wouldn’t have been able to take it, but there was always a possibility she was lost to The Maze, but that was too painful to consider. Ma hasn’t been in The Glade even half as long as Cleo, but Cleo would literally die for her, as she was proving with his act of what Alby would no doubt call recklessness in less than a few hours. “How else have I saved your life Marie?”  
“It’s so weird to hear you call me that,” she says, coughing slightly. She is so tired, stuck out here for days alone, cold, lost, injured. Cleo starts to guide her back the way she came. “Well, you and your cookies, I hadn’t eaten any for a few days, you know how I feel about special treatment, but turns out that stock of cookies, lasted me through the days I was stuck here.”  
“Okay, I stopped you starving to death, valid,” Cleo agrees. “But Ma, what even happened?”  
“I woke up early, and I heard, I know it sounds crazy Cleo, but I heard crying, like-,”  
“A child crying,” Cleo says. Ma turns to look her in the eyes.  
“How did you know that?”  
“I heard it too, in The Maze,” Cleo says pulling her eyes away from Ma’s gaze. “You… and your desire to help.”  
"It was more than that Cleo. So much more, it was like I didn't have a choice. It was a kid Cleo, I didn’t even know what I was doing, I just followed it, and then… I was in The Maze, I don't remember getting in The Maze, I don't remember walking, I don't remember any of it. I was just here, I don't know how or why, I had no idea which way I came, no idea where to go, and I just kept getting more and more lost,” Ma looks almost tearful, which is something Cleo hasn’t seen on her before. "I didn't want to be here, I never want to be here."  
“You are okay, I got you,” Cleo reassures her.  
“And then it got dark and a griever came for me, it smashed into the wall and some of it gave way, I crawled into the space before the hole it created collapsed more, kept the griever out, but I couldn’t move, I don’t know if it was fear or pain, or just the feeling I couldn’t get that rubble out the way, I just stayed here, for days, waiting.”  
“You are badass Ma, you know that,” Cleo says, smiling. “But I still only saved you twice.”  
“No, you didn’t, I was attacked by a griever,” Ma says.  
“You said, what does that have to do with- wait” Cleo scans her, she doesn’t show any symptoms, after days she would, she assessed her injuries when she first found her and there was nothing to suggest she got stung, but Ma is dancing around the fact. Ma reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small hollowed wooden bottle, alike Cleo’s because Cleo made it. She turns it over and right wedged into the wood is a sting.  
“It would have hit me, if the day before you hadn’t slipped your goddamn honey water into my pocket,” she says. Cleo stares at the bottle for the longest time, time almost falls away entirely. “I am okay Cleo, but that is because of you.”  
“Please tell Alby that when we get back” Cleo says, turning back to The Maze. “Oh and probably Gally, he will have a lot to say.”  
“Doesn’t he always?”


	3. Chapter 3

“I would say I expected better of you, but that would be a lie” Gally says. Cleo rolls her eyes. Cleo and Ma made it back to The Glade over an hour before close, since then Cleo made sure to fix up Ma fully, got her clean clothes and hot food and forced her to lie down in a semi-comfortable hammock and rest. And also, since then Alby decided it wasn’t his place to say anything on the matter, so Gally has taken it upon himself.  
“I don’t like to think of you perceiving me at all Gally, if I’m honest,” Cleo says as she starts to light the fire.  
“We are all glad Ma is back and safe, and we are grateful for that, but it doesn’t change the fact you broke the rules,” Gally says. Cleo nods slowly in sarcastic agreement.  
“I think it alters the situation slightly, actually,” Minho says.  
“With all due respect Minho, I don’t care for your opinion,” Gally says.  
“She found her, no one else could, and I will be anything no one else would have, I don’t know why or how but Cleo found her, and if she had been out there much longer,” Minho trails off, eyes moving to look in the direction of where Ma rests.  
“She would have died,” Newt says plainly. “And that would have been on us, because like it or not, Cleo achieved what no runner was able to achieve in days, and she did it in hours. You are suggesting, what? We punish her for that?”  
“She broke the rules,” Gally says. “She always breaks the rules.”  
“She helped make the rules,” Newt points out.  
“You know, she isn’t a god, she isn’t our leader, she is just Cleo, she should be held to the same accountability as all of us,” Gally says.  
“I agree,” Cleo says. “What do you do when someone saves a fellow Glader, what accountability are they held to?”  
“Don’t twist it Cleo,” Gally says.  
“Tell me what you would like to see happen Gally,” Cleo moves from the fire and gets close to Gally, she is much smaller than him, having to stare up, neck craned to look him in his eyes but that doesn’t make her any less intimidating. The distance between them is minimal and Gally starts to get nervous again. “Tell me Gally, if you actually had the power to do anything, what would you do? I went into The Maze, I am not a runner, that is against the rules, I went against direct orders from Ably, against the rules, and I took bandages without being a Med-jack, against the rules. Tell me Gally, what punishment do you think suits me, for my crimes?”  
“You’re making him sweat,” Newt laughs. It is the first time since her return she has seen Newt look anything but serious and that fills her with relief. She was worried that even with their conversation, with everything, he might be mad at her. She senses he is a little, but not enough to worry her.  
“Well, are you going to answer her?” Minho asks. Gally looks at both Minho and Newt in turn, realising how badly outnumbered he is, and then looks back to Cleo.  
“We aren’t done here,” he says before walking away.  
“I make him so nervous,” Cleo laughs to herself.  
“He fancies you,” Minho says tapping her on the shoulder and heading over to check on Ma.  
“No, he doesn’t,” Cleo calls back to him, she hears him chuckle as he moves but he doesn’t respond. With just Cleo and Newt left around the fire while everyone else is getting their dinner, there is an odd quiet. Not that it is odd for it to be quiet when it is just the both of them, for the longest time quiet was something they promised each other. But a lot of things change, and now the quiet is almost deafening. “The fire is stable; I should go check on Ma too.”  
“Wait,” Newt says. Cleo pauses, midstride, a lump rising in her throat, but she pushes it down with a deep breath, reminding herself how she can and cannot feel. “Can we talk?”  
“Always,” Cleo says without missing a beat. Newt looks almost surprised but doesn’t comment, she turns on her heels and sits next to him on the log seat. “Are you going to chastise me too?”  
“No,” Newt says. “That would be hypocritical of me.”  
“You didn’t tell me to go,” Cleo says.  
“I didn’t stop you when I knew that’s exactly what you were going to do,” he admits, keeping his eyes on the flames. “I basically told you to do.”  
“You would’ve if I didn’t,” Cleo says.  
“I like to think that’s true, but then again, I am not who I was, am I?” Newt asks. Cleo turns away from Newt and the flames to look up at the sky for a moment, to keep herself together. They don’t talk about that.  
“If you aren’t going to give me an earful like everyone else, what did you want to talk about?” Cleo asks.  
“I just wanted you to know, that if you hadn’t come back, I would’ve gone looking for you,” Newt says. “I wouldn’t have left you out there- so I get it, you are fiercely protective of Ma, and I get it, because we may not talk like we used to, but you are still so important to me, you know that?”  
“Newt, things are different now, things have changed, but don’t think for a second I feel any different,” Cleo says. “You and Minho, before you I was a part of this place, but because of you I found a way to belong. You are my friend Newt, always.”  
“Okay, I wanted you to know, because I didn’t really have your back with Alby and I should have-,”  
“Maybe having you advocate people spending extra time in The Maze wouldn’t have been beneficial, in hindsight,” Cleo points out. Newt sighs, throwing a stick into the flames.  
“You are probably right on that,” he admits. The way the light reflects off his face he almost looks sad, Cleo can’t help but think he often looks sad. He didn’t used to. Back before everything changed, he was always smiling. Now, it feels he only smiles when people are watching. “You better get some food, you know what the others are like, animals. And check on Ma, I know you want to.”  
“See you at story time,” Cleo says leaving the fireside. Newt watches her go and sighs. The weight hovering over his shoulder, increasing slightly with every breath, as he watches her walk away.  
“Coward,” he mumbles. 

Cleo walks up to Minho and Ma with food in hand. “How you feeling?” she asks with a smile.  
“Alive, and quite overwatched,” Ma jokes side eyeing Minho.  
“Am I suffocating you?” he jokes. Ma raises a hand gesture a small quantity between thumb and index finger. Minho shrugs it off laughing.  
“He was worried about you, it is more for him than you,” Cleo says.  
“Don’t I know it,” Ma smiles. “Have a hard time with Alby?”  
“No, Alby kind of let everything slip as soon as he saw you, realised he can’t punish me for being right,” Cleo laughs. “Gally however, he has a bone to pick.”  
“He is a dog with a bone,” Minho says. Ma and Cleo exchange a look, not entirely sure if Minho actually ever met a dog, or has real reference beyond the expression. Not that Ma or Cleo could solidly say themselves they ever owned a dog, but nevertheless.  
“He is a dog,” Ma mumbles under breath.  
“He is frustrated, and if I were him, I would be too, he isn’t wrong, I broke a tonne of rules, but I am given leniency because it never backfires. I am right, and even if I have to do things, I’m not supposed to do get my result, I always get the desired result. So that must be very frustrating for him as he is so desperate to see me fail,” Cleo says.  
“That’s a him problem,” Ma says. “You have never done anything to make him dislike you the way he does.”  
Cleo pauses for a moment, thinking. She isn’t sure that’s true, since the day Gally climbed out that box he was a thorn in her ass, and she was very aware that’s exactly what he would be. He was headstrong, but not smart enough to justify it, he was passionate about being right, and he wanted to lead, he is the kind of person who expects respect before they’ve earned it. Gally has always rubbed Cleo the wrong way and maybe as a result of that she has been more harsh towards him, antagonistic, sarcastic, than she needed to be. Maybe she understands on some level Gally’s dislike of her.  
“I don’t think he dislikes her at all, that’s the problem” Minho says.  
“Don’t start that, get out,” Ma says shoving Minho playfully. Minho takes the hint and walks off towards the fire. Ma looks at Cleo with a curiosity and raises an eyebrow. “So?”  
“So?” Cleo says, unsure of what Ma is prying about.  
“Play that with me and I will start to explain why I actually agree with Minho about Gally and I think you do too,” Ma says mock threatening.  
“I genuinely don’t know what you’re asking about Ma,” Cleo says.  
“Fine, Newt,” she says. When Cleo’s expression doesn’t really change, Ma pushes herself up into a more upright position and reaches forward grabbing Cleo’s face with one hand.  
“Hey,” Cleo protests.  
“What happened with you and Newt, Minho said he asked you to stay at the fire,” Ma says. Cleo knows it is all in love, but it doesn’t make the idea of Ma believing anything interesting could have occurred any less painful. “And?”  
“And nothing Ma, we just talked, like friends do,” Cleo says.  
“Don’t try that with me, it’s me,” Ma says.  
“And as I have told you, time and time again, there is nothing to tell,” Cleo says, pulling out of Ma’s grip.  
“But you like him,” Ma says after a moment.  
“No, I don’t,” Cleo says.  
“You can bury those feelings all you want from yourself Leo, you can bury them from him, from everyone else, but you can’t from me, I see it. I see the way you can’t bear to look at him, I see the way you change when you talk to him, about him, I see the light in your eyes, I know you. Possibly better than anyone else, which is quite an achievement considering some of them have known you a lot longer. I think I might even know you better than you sometimes. But I think in this case, you know I’m right, you just can’t admit it to yourself.”  
“You know me Ma, I don’t entertain the idea of romance, it’s nice to sing about, but the only love I have in my life is you,” Cleo leans down and kisses Ma on the top of her head before trying to leave.  
“Sing extra loud, so I can hear you from here, will you do that for me?” Ma asks, knowing not to push the subject further.  
“Of course,” Cleo says. She hovers for a moment, not really wanting to leave Ma’s side at all after the days she’s had, but knowing she promised to sing tonight. “Even if I did,” she says after a moment, “have feelings for him. Feelings more than- it wouldn’t matter. Not only because of the rules, not only because it would never work out, not only because I don’t think I should feel that way about anyone. But because even if I did feel for him… like that. He wouldn’t feel the same.”  
Before Ma can interject Cleo has walked into the dark, heading back to the fire and Ma sighs holding onto the last remaining cookie Cleo provided her with and pondering how someone so intelligent could convince themselves of something so stupid.  
By the time Cleo nears the fire the commotion is evident, the boys are circling what typically seems like a fight, and although Cleo doesn’t recognise one of the boys, the one who she does, the one she is sure instigated the fight, is clear to be Gally. Cleo pushes through the boys with force and stumbles into the circle just as Gally lands a hit on the other boy. “Really, you’re fighting?” Cleo demands.  
“Thomas,” the boy says from the floor. Gally doesn’t break eye contact with Cleo as the other boys start to congratulate the greenie on his remembering. Thomas turns to Cleo a little dazed from his fighting and offers a hand. “You must be Cleo.”  
“You must be the greenie,” Cleo says not turning to look at him, eyes fixed on Gally and his smug smile. “Pleasure to meet you,” she moves closer to Gally, “fighting?” she repeats.  
“It helped him remember,” Gally says. “The breaking of the rules was worth the outcome, right Cleo? That’s how it works.”  
“Screw you,” Cleo whispers only loud enough for him to hear.  
“Cleo!” comes a voice from the crowd of boys. Chuck who had been tidying up after dinner and was yet to join the others pushes past and hugs Cleo enthusiastically. “You’re back!”  
“Yeah kid, I am,” Cleo says, dropping her angry tone and hugging Chuck back. “Have you visited Ma? I am sure she would love to see you.”  
“Before dinner,” Chuck says with a grin. “You saved her.”  
“Yeah, I did,” Cleo says taking a seat. The rest of the boys settle down and take their places around the fire. Thomas is watching Cleo from across the fire, almost perplexed.  
“Cleo?” he asks in the silence. “So, you went out there, into The Maze to find someone?”  
“Ma, one of our own, she got lost out there a few days back,” Cleo says, searching the ground by her feet for two decent sized rocks.  
“From what they’ve told me, surely she wouldn’t survive that?” Thomas asks.  
“Ma is a survivor,” Cleo says picking up some rocks she deems adequate. “You will meet her tomorrow; she is resting now. But she is a survivor, through and through. No one could have survived it except Ma.”  
“Or you,” Chuck says. Cleo throws a sideways smile. Cleo scans the boys, who are all watching, waiting patiently. They are looking for some kind of return to normality, and Cleo is trying to find the strength to give it to them. She is trying to let the voice at the back of her head rest, she cannot blame them for their lack of faith, their belief Ma was beyond hope, or at least she is trying not to blame them. Minho moves to sit next to her, hand delicately placed on her shoulder for but a moment. She nods at him, and then her eyes catch Newts across the fire, he is sat with Alby and Thomas, she isn’t sure how she missed him before. She dusts the rocks off and slowly starts to tap them together until the finds the rhythm she is looking for.  
“What is happening?” Thomas whispers to Newt. Newt smiles, not taking his eyes off Cleo as she decides on where she will start.  
“Cleo is the Keeper of the Fire, she is getting ready to tell a story,” Newt says.  
“She remembers stories? I thought we don’t get any memories like that back?” he asks.  
“Just her and Ma, maybe it’s a girl thing,” Alby says. Cleo starts to hum. “But we are grateful.”  
“There once was a ship that put to sea,” Cleo says finding her voice. “The name of the ship was the Billy of Tea. The winds blew up, her bow dipped down. O blow, my bully boys, blow.” The other boys slowly start to tap along. Cleo remembers to lift her voice in a hope Ma could hear her better. “Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum,” Thomas glances to Alby who just smiles, “One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go.”  
“She’s interesting, isn’t she Cleo?” Thomas asks.  
“She had not been two weeks from shore. When down on her a right whale bore. The captain called all hands and swore. He’d take that whale in tow,” Cleo doesn’t even notice the boys talking quietly as she focuses on her story telling.  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Alby says.  
“Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go,” Cleo almost drops her stones but keeps singing.  
“She just, seem interesting,” Thomas says.  
“Need I remind you the rules,” Newt asks, still not taking his eyes of Cleo.  
“Before the boat had hit the water. The whale’s tail came up and caught her. All hands to the side, harpooned and fought her. When she dived down below. Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go-,” her voice hitches for a moment but she smiles.  
“Not like that,” Thomas says. “I just mean, she has stories to tell, doesn’t she?”  
“She has been here a very long time, longer than most of us, she helped make The Glade what it is,” Alby says.  
“No line was cut, no whale was freed. The Captain’s mind was not of greed. But he belonged to the whaleman’s creed. She took the ship in tow. Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go.” Cleo even catches Gally tapping his foot and smirks in his direction.  
“And Ma?” Thomas asks, looking past the fire and in the direction of where Ma is resting. “What is she like?”  
“For forty days, or even more. The line went slack, then tight once more. All boats were lost, there were only four. But still that whale did go. Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go,” Cleo bumps Minho’s shoulder and he speaks the lines along with her and she laughs while singing, a true laugh. A laugh of relief, of calm, of peace. Ma is safe, The Glade is safe, and even Gally and his mood could not ruin that for her, not tonight.  
“Ma is something,” Newt says. “You have to meet her really, like Cleo, you just can’t understand them really without meeting them. They are so different to everyone else.”  
“As far as I’ve heard, the fight’s still on. The line’s not cut and the whale’s not gone. The Wellerman makes his regular call. To encourage the Captain, crew, and all. Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go,” Cleo braves a glance at Newt and Thomas as they talk and she is warmed by how naturally Newt is talking, seeing him calm.  
“Not just because they are the only girls,” Alby says. “It is like they have something we don’t, a knowledge for sure, but it is more than that, like they understand our lives in a way we can’t.”  
“How can anyone really understand his place?” Thomas asks.  
“Cleo and Ma try,” Alby says, leaning into the fire for the last lines of the song.  
“Soon may the Wellerman come. To bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin’ is done. We’ll take our leave and go,” her voice shakes on the last word but the boys don’t notice. They clap gently and she mocks a bow. “Thank you.”  
“Another,” encourages one of the boys. Cleo nods.  
“Of course,” Cleo muses, “any requests?”  
“I have a request,” Alby says.  
“A story?” Cleo asks, as Alby usually asks for fables and tales of victory and overcoming monsters, in the way a leader does.  
“No, not tonight,” he says. There is a moment of quiet before he speaks again. “Leave her.”  
“Leave her?” Cleo echoes and he nods. There is a movement around the fire but no alternates or protests so Cleo shrugs and starts to tap the beat. “I thought I heard the old man say-,”  
“Leave her, Johnny leave her,” comes Ma’s voice from behind. Cleo looks up as Ma moves into the space between her and Minho and takes the pebbles from Cleo’s hand and overtakes the beat.  
“You should be resting,” Cleo says.  
“Hush,” Ma says and waits for her to continue singing.  
“That’s Ma,” Newt says.  
“Tomorrow you will get your pay. And it's time for us to leave her,” Cleo sings. Thomas says nothing in return as he is unaware if he would be able to find something to say, so he just watches, not taking his eyes of Ma for a moment as they sing and story tell.  
“Leave her, Johnny, leave her.”  
“Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her.”  
“For the voyage is long and the winds don't blow.”  
“And it's time for us to leave her.”


	4. Chapter 4

Most the boys have left the fire and Minho has made sure to guide Ma back to Cleo’s watch tower for the night and provided her with extra blankets with the promise Cleo would watch over her. However, Cleo has set her mind on something so sits at the fire and waits. The flames are fading into embers by the time Gally finally gets up and heads away from the stragglers. Cleo slowly gets up in an attempt to be discrete. No one at the fireside even notices her leave and she follows Gally into the dark. Gally noticing her presence but not acknowledging her changes course and heads towards the trees. As soon as they enter the thickness of the woods Gally turns to look at her.  
“Got a problem Cleo?” he asks.  
“Got a reason for leading me into the woods?” Cleo retorts.  
“You were following me,” he says stepping closer.  
“I have a bone to pick with you,” Cleo says. He rolls his eyes.  
“When don’t you Cleo?” he asks.  
“You wanted to get back at me by starting a fight? That is so dumb, for so many reasons, clearly you can’t even comprehend. But surely you can understand that violence isn’t compatible to what I did?”  
“If you had died, chasing a feeling, where would that have left The Glade?” he asks. Cleo laughs at him, looking a mix of genuinely shocked and annoyed.  
“Don’t try and act like you would care if I walked out there one day and never came back, you would be filled with an incomparable relief Gally, and we both know it,” Cleo snaps.  
“I don’t hate you Cleo,” Gally says. “You infuriate me, absolutely drive me insane, because you are reckless. You are so intelligent; you have this whole place right under your thumb and either no one sees it or no one cares. Everyone would bend over backwards to serve the wishes of Cleo. You and Ma, you walk around this place, _Queens of The Glade_. And I can’t even be mad at that, because shuck you’ve earned it. You know what to do, what to say, you always get your way, and I can’t even be mad, because everyone loves you Cleo. No one feels put out by the power you seem to hold, you benevolent queen. But how can someone with clearly such a self preservation skill be so damn reckless. You throw yourself into The Maze, where we regularly die, day in day out. You literally dance in firepits, I don’t understand how you can be so willing to risk yourself-,”  
“You are still mad at me about the day I climbed the wall, aren’t you?” Cleo asks. The moonlight sifts through the trees and hits Gally’s face, illuminating him even just for a moment, but enough for Cleo to see the concern.  
“Yes,” he says. “But this isn’t even about that.” He steps closer and despite ever feeling threatened by Gally, despite never being sure she’s been particularly fearful of any man in her life, Cleo takes a step back. “This isn’t even about why you make me so mad,” he steps another step closer and like a dance Cleo takes another step back. “This isn’t about the wall, or The Maze or all the little things,” soon Cleo finds herself backed up against a tree and Gally towers over her, the same closeness she would often inflict upon him to make her points. But for once, he doesn’t look nervous to be this close to her. “It’s that you clearly have an issue with me. You don’t trust my judgment. You couldn’t agree with me if it could save your life. And no matter what I do it is wrong. I never said I dislike you Cleo, I like seeing you not getting your way because it is rare. I like seeing you put in your place because you never are. I admire the rarities in the day in day out. But you have the problem with me. You make me so angry for no reason.”  
“You think I enjoy being at your throat, it is exhausting” Cleo says. “But since the day you got out of that box you have seemed to undermine me-,”  
“Not since the beginning, for a moment there, we were almost friends,” he says. She says nothing for a moment, just looks at him, breathing slowly so not to increase her presence, not to be any closer to him than she already is. He looks down at her, without the feelings of being mid-argument for the first time and he pauses. His expression changes. He almost looks amused. “Do you feel nervous Cleo? Me being this close? Do you understand how it feels? To not feel threatened by the threatening presence, but nervous?”  
“I don’t feel nervous Gally,” she says. She isn’t lying. She doesn’t feel nervous, she feels confused. She can’t help but feel like this could only go two ways and she is waying up those options. She has only ever felt this way once before- being this close to someone and unsure if they will pull away in frustration or attempt to kiss her.  
“By the gods, do you ever just consider you can admit I am right,” he says pulling back. Cleo shakes the confusion off, Minho has just gotten in her head, she couldn’t actually think for even a moment that Gally would attempt such a thing.  
“I don’t feel nervous Gally,” she says. “I rarely do. Nervousness is not something that comes easily to me, I am not used to it, so I surely recognise it when it is there.”  
“Cleo, typical Cleo, you can’t feel anything if it doesn’t work in your plan, even down to your feelings you have everything planned out for exact effect. You don’t take a moment off do you?”  
“Just, leave the greenie alone,” Cleo says, walking away. “Goodnight Gally.”  
“Goodnight Cleo.”

 _“You were supposed to be a merciful ruler, Cleo, not a benevolent queen, you care far too much, you love with your heart and not your head, that will be the downfall of you my dear.”_  
The voice of the dream fades away as Cleo wakes, sunlight leaking through the breaks in the wall fabric. Cleo runs a hand through her hair and shakes the tiredness from her head, before turning to check on Ma who is still sleeping on the other side of the watch tower. Quietly Cleo rises and slips down the rope ladder. To her surprise Newt is waiting at the ground for her.  
“Morning,” he says taking her off guard.  
“Morning,” she responds.  
“You alright love?” he asks. Cleo stops dead, how three simple words could bring back so many memories is beyond her. It has been so very long since Newt had referred to her that way. Her mind creeps back to the very first time he did.

_-Flashback-  
“Morning love,” Newt says with a smile. Cleo pulls herself away from the crops.  
“Morning stranger,” Cleo smiles. Newt places a hand on his chest, mocking pain.  
“You wound me,” he says.  
“I thought you had forgotten me,” Cleo says, crossing her arms.  
“How could I forget you love? You are my favourite after all.” _

“Cleo?” Newt asks. But Cleo is reliving the very last time he called her that.

_-Flashback-  
Newt lays in the Med-tent. He is bandaged and treated, he looks tired and in paint. There are several boys around him but as soon as Cleo walks in, they scatter. Alby turns to Newt before leaving.  
“Good luck mate,” Alby whispers. He nods at Cleo as he leaves. Cleo just stands there, in the entrance way, arms crossed, eyes puffy like she has been crying, face emotionless.  
“Hey love,” Newt tries. Her face turns to anger, that stops at her eyes which are just filled with pain, Newt can barely bear to look at her face.  
“Don’t you dare, hey love, me,” she says.  
“Cleo,” he tries.  
“Why were you out there?” she asks.  
“Minho-,”  
“Yeah, I don’t believe that story for even a second,” Cleo says cutting him off. “The others might. But I saw Minho’s face when he told it, the way he couldn’t look me in the eyes. The way he delayed me so long from coming in here. The way he just, couldn’t look at me. He felt guilty, I couldn’t figure out why, I mean he didn’t break your leg. He didn’t hurt you, why would he look at me so filled with guilt. I have an idea, and I am hoping I am wrong, I am so very much hoping I am wrong. So, I will ask you again, why were you out there Newt?”  
“Cleo, I…” he pauses. “You know you-,”  
“You know what, no, I can’t see you right now,” she turns to leave. “Feel better Newt.”  
“Cleo,” he calls after her. But she doesn’t respond and she doesn’t stop walking. She walks and she walks and she walks until she reaches the entrance to The Maze and she stares into it. The Maze is haunting at the best of times, but to the hurting souls it is like a siren’s call. She stares down The Maze until it closes and then she sits, in front of the entrance and just stays. She doesn’t move for dinner. Or when several of The Gladers try to convince her to turn in. She sits there all night, until dawn breaks and then she gets up without a word and goes to her watch tower, where she remains for several days. She emerges, and she looks like the first day of spring, so hopeful, and full of life, she sings and she jokes and she does her part and all the while avoids the med-tent. _

“Cleo,” Newt says placing a hand on her arm.  
“Yes,” Cleo says pulling herself out of her head.  
“Where did you go?” he asks, concerned.  
“Back,” she says. Newt searches her eyes, her face, her expression, searching for something to justify his growing concern for her, but she gives him no reason to doubt her so he just slowly let’s go of her arm.  
“How is Ma?” he asks after a moment passes.  
“Resting still, but she is going okay, so much better than I expected,” Cleo admits.  
“Well, you said it best, she is a survivor,” Newt says.  
“We have to be, don’t we,” Cleo says, trying so hard not to meet Newt’s eye. Newt had only been in The Glade a few months before his accident, but in those view months he came more to Cleo than she had ever remembered anyone being. He was her closest friend. He made her smile. He got her through the rougher days. They understood each other. Or so she had thought. A few days before his incident, in a moment of quiet in a flowery patch of The Glade, it had been just the two of them, slacking off under the sunlight and she had confided in him, about how lost she had felt for a long time, how empty, how sad, and how she would never show it to the boys because she had to be better, stronger, she had to be hopeful. But she wasn’t sure if she would ever feel like she belonged in a place she didn’t understand how she came to be in. She told him she was grateful for her life in The Glade, for Alby and the boys, for Minho who was her good friend even then, and especially Newt. But she told him she felt she wasn’t ever sure the sadness would pass. Newt agreed and held her gaze for a very long time before changing the subject.  
Ma climbs down the ladder and her smile is glowing. “Hey Newt,” she says, trying her hardest to hide her feeling that she interrupted something.  
“Morning Ma, good to see you looking so spritely,” he says. “If you two are feeling up to it, I have a favour to ask.”  
“For you Newt, anything,” Ma says, linking Cleo’s arm.  
“The greenie, Thomas, I need you girls to just, watch him today, guide him, reinforce the rules considering how many were rebelled against, let’s say, yesterday,” Newt says. Cleo rolls her eyes.  
“Gally is the only one who showed actually defiance in front of Thomas,” she points out.  
“Of course, we will,” Ma says. “Besides, I would like to meet him.”  
“He was at the fire last night,” Cleo says. Newt takes this as his cue to leave and he slips away.  
“I got to stay for four songs and I was with you the whole time, I didn’t even see him,” Ma says. She waits a moment, considering her question before asking it anyway. “Is he cute?” Cleo laughs. “What it is a valid question.”  
“I know,” Cleo says. “Sadly, I cannot answer, as that is subjective.”  
“Okay, in your subjective opinion,” Ma says. “Is the boy cute?”  
“How many times do I have to tell you Ma, I only have eyes for you,” she teases. Ma shoves her jokingly. Cleo looks across The Glade and her eyes land on Thomas looking around a little bewildered and lost. “Well I guess you can judge for yourself, I have found him.”


	5. Chapter 5

Objectively Cleo would say that Thomas was an attractive boy, he had attractive features, and she would understand why anyone would be attracted to him. But attraction was always something as far as Cleo could remember, she kept under lock and key to the best of her ability. Attraction was involuntary and Cleo as much as anyone else was subject to it, but acknowledging it, or acting on it, was entirely within her control and she liked to keep it that way. She had learned to keep it that way. The same way she moderates what she shares with the rest of The Gladers, from music to dreams. It is better that way. Cleo tries her best to not lie to the others, but she keeps her secrets, especially from Alby who she feels quite guilty about. But not from Ma, she is honest with Ma. She remembers the first time she sung the song she was singing when she found Ma. Ma asked why she hadn’t heard that before, and Cleo told her she felt it wasn’t suited for the boys, they make take offense and it could be something they sung together, something just the two of them had. Marie understood that. The need they had for that. The Glade runs so well because of the rules, and the rules are based on one simple concept, Gladers share everything. The concept works, Gladers share resources, workload, and responsibility and the only things they cannot share are forbidden for everyone, like Ma and Cleo themselves. This is how The Glade runs, how it has become so much more than it was. Cleo is very aware of that. And Ma is very aware of Cleo’s presence in her own head, like she is far away. It would worry Ma more if she hadn’t caught Cleo talking to Newt, and that tells Ma almost all she needs to know.  
“Thomas,” Cleo calls out. Thomas turns to see the girls and nods. Ma nods.  
“Okay, you could have just told me yes,” Ma says. Thomas looks at Ma for a long time before remembering when he is called, he is supposed to respond.  
“Girls,” he says.  
“We shall be accompanying you today,” Cleo says. “Thomas, this is Ma.”  
“Marie, but everyone just calls me Ma,” Ma says.  
“Nice to meet you Ma, you caused quite a ruckus it seems,” Thomas says, “do that often?”  
“I definitely do not,” Ma says, blushing a little. Gally walks into view and he meets Cleo’s eye and he looks away so fast that Cleo feels almost overexposed, and she isn’t sure why. Gally feeling embarrassed about his behaviour the night before just tries to keep out of her way.  
“Well,” Thomas says. “What am I supposed to help you girls with?”  
“Nothing really, we are just here to help you acclimatise, I don’t know how much anyone told you about this place, but it can be a lot,” Ma says. Thomas looks at the floor.  
“Yeah, it can be.”

Ma and Thomas walk a few steps ahead of Cleo, and Cleo smiles at Ma’s energy. She isn’t entirely sure if Ma is as recovered as she is acting, the physical stress of her situation and the emotion must be more than Cleo can imagine, but then again Ma is so strong. The first day she came up in that box, she fought her way through the boys like a storm. Cleo hadn’t bothered crowding around the box, she had become a little done with the humdrum routine and was making the first version of her bow out of some flexible wood and self woven string. But the yelling of the boys had been enough to draw her eyes up from her construction and in the general direction of the chaos and Ma, striding across The Glade with Alby and Minho in tow was enough to get her whole attention. It would be easy to assume Ma fell into her role as caregiver here like it came naturally to her, because in ways it did, she was caring by nature, she wanted to see people okay, she hated suffering and pain. But still she woke up in a box, no memories and surrounded by boys, it was normal to have an adverse reaction. But Cleo took to her like a house on fire, she adored her instantly. She wasn’t up to fight the way Cleo was when she first arrived but her reaction in a moment of vulnerability was admirable. Cleo had jumped from her perch, not bothering with the long way down, and rushed over. She pushed Alby back with one hand and kept Minho at a distance with a simple look. “Stay.” That was all she needed to say and the boys backed down and Ma turned to her, and the look of admiration was returned. Cleo didn’t leave Ma’s side for the first few weeks, not until she got her name back and some piece of songs and stories. Cleo had always felt a tiny amount of guilt for how much she was grateful for Marie. How could she care for someone so much, yet be grateful that they were going through this torturous life, just because it meant that she was less alone? Cleo knows there is very little Cleo wouldn’t do to get Ma somewhere better than this place, and if she had been given the choice, she would have never put Ma through this, but it doesn’t change the fact she doubts she would have continued to be as strong as she is now without her by her side. Marie was Cleo’s lifeline. All Cleo truly wanted, not needed or could ask for, but all she really wanted, was to see Ma succeed, to see Ma safe and happy. She could debate the merits of genie wishes and romantic relationships all day long, but she never had to debate about Ma. Ma was constant, Ma was definite, Ma was number one. What came before her did not matter, and whatever comes after they face together, that is the promise they made to each other, a promise Cleo believed was the only thing she could say to be true in this whole world.  
Ma’s laugh breaks Cleo’s trail of thought. “Thomas, maybe not a builder,” Ma says as he trips up again. “And definitely not a runner.”  
“Let Fry have him,” Cleo says. Ma smiles back at her.  
“I wouldn’t write him off yet,” she jokes. Thomas looks back at Cleo, who looks back at him, waiting for him to say or ask whatever it is that is on his mind.  
“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?” Thomas asks.  
“Not where I thought this was going,” Cleo says, “but yeah, I have been here, a really long time.”  
“She is one of the oldest living Gladers,” Ma says.  
“Alby was before me, and Nick and Clint, I arrived not too long before Minho and Gally, then slowly others arrived, we lost a few on the way, Frypan, Newt, Zart, we gained some more, lost some more, then Ma, and boys kept coming up in the boxes, Chuck, Ben, it is just how The Maze works, some of us had to be here in the beginning,” Cleo says.  
“It must be hard, being here so long,” he says.  
“It is hard being here at all,” Cleo says.  
“No, you misunderstand me, I just mean, you’ve been here so long, so you’ve watched people come and you’ve watched them leave,” Thomas says.  
“We can say die, you know,” Ma says. “Because people only leave when they die, we don’t have to dance around it, there is no point in The Glade, we all know how dangerous The Maze is…”  
“And you survived out there for days and nights, right?” Thomas says, turning back to Ma, looking impressed and intrigued.  
“Yeah, but it was luck more than anything,” Ma says. “And persistence.”  
“Ma has a tendency to undersell herself,” Cleo says. “No one could have done what she did.”  
“From what Newt told me I have to agree, a maze that changes, that releases creatures that try to kill and infect you at night, I can understand how that is harsh environment for anyone for just a few hours, yet again days, alone. You seem pretty impressive to me Marie,” Thomas says. Cleo watches as Ma tries not to blush and she can’t help but smile.  
“Ma is very impressive,” Cleo says.  
“And she saved my ass,” Ma points out. “More than once.”  
“Just doing my job,” Cleo says.  
“I thought your job was to do with the fire?” Thomas asks. “Can I get that job assignment?”  
“No,” Ma laughs. “They made that job for her.”  
“They don’t trust me with anything else,” Cleo jokes. She moves in the sunlight and the metal chain around her neck catches the light and Thomas’s eye.  
“Is that a necklace?” he asks. Cleo quickly tucks the chain back under the fabric.  
“Yeah,” she mumbles, quickly regaining her calm composure. “I had it when I came up in the box.”  
“What is it?” he asks.  
“It is just a chain, nothing special,” Cleo says, wanting to quickly change the subject. She is telling the truth, the necklace she wears around her neck is just that, an empty chain, except it wasn’t always that way, it used to have something on it, something that she believes had to be connected to whoever she was before the box, before The Glade. It gave her a cold sick feeling whenever she looked at it, so she took it off and buried it in the dense trees in The Glade and tried to bury the feeling their too. But for whatever reason it was like the world didn’t want her forgetting that easily. 

“What about over there,” Thomas gestures to a collection of trees in the far side of The Glade.  
“There is nothing over there, it was used for a burial ground for a while, but that is all, we don’t really go over there unless you don’t want to be disturbed,” Ma says, moving through the crops looking for anything worth picking up for lunch. Cleo looks back at the trees. She used to use that collection of trees as a place to hide from her responsibilities with Newt, they would walk through the trees in the shade and talk, most about what they thought life could be like outside of The Maze, what people were like. Cleo climbed one of those trees once and nearly fell out of it but Newt had caught her. She had forgotten that memory until now. She hadn’t really been there since… except for last night, she guesses that is why Gally went there, because no one else would. It was the perfect place for an argument like that.  
“So, you grew all this stuff from nothing?” Thomas says.  
“There were supplies in the boxes to begin with and then there were less and less, we had to sustain ourselves, that much was made clear by whatever bastards put us here,” Cleo says. She looks around and most people are intent on their work and not paying them much attention. “Archery?” Cleo whispers to Ma, who nods enthusiastically. She guides them into a slightly sheltered opening by one large tree, Cleo reaches up into the tree for her homemade bow while Cleo sets the wooden targets up. Thomas watches them both, leaning on the tree.  
“Why do I get the feeling, this isn’t what we are supposed to be doing?” he asks.  
“Tell anyone about this and you will get an arrow in the ass, understand greenie?” Cleo says with a smile.  
“Okay Cleo, I get it, why do I get the feeling you were asked to watch on me to get me to not act out and you just disregarded that,” Thomas says. Cleo smiles.  
“Look, Tommy, I am going to call you Tommy,” Cleo says, he laughs but doesn’t protest, “we have rules in The Glade, and they were made to keep us safe, keep the community working well, keep us from killing each other. Keep things fair. The Glade rules are essential, they are important, they are necessary, until they aren’t. We share everything or we don’t have it, we share resources and we share responsibility, we share time and stories and our lives, we are all we have known and we are all we have. We have to work together so we don’t fall apart. These are things even a greenie can understand. It is how we have thrived the way we have, it is how we continue to survive. I agree with the rules, I helped make those rules, I know why they are there, and I understand why they matter. Don’t leave The Glade, common sense, safety, if you don’t know The Maze you will get lost, and if you get lost you die, your death is final for you and a loss for us. We share our resources because together we can make better things, if we sectioned off the things we grew we would be worse off, if we limited who could have what food or shelter then we would be dominating and no good society survives like that,” Cleo talks like she knows but really she has stories and flashes of dreams that feel like memories, but as Alby says Cleo understands the world of The Glade, maybe better than most. “And what we cannot share, it is no place for anyone to have. Those rules keep us from fighting and making this already difficult existence worse. These things make sense. However, there are exceptions, bendings to the rules, reasons. It is important people do their jobs, however my job only is at night, Ma’s job is only when people need her, you don’t have a job, so instead my job becomes making sure Ma is doing okay after her ordeal, making sure the greenie settles in. In these ways this is perfectly fine, there are no rules against archery, possibly because no one knows about it who would try to cause a problem. And then there is Ma’s ordeal itself, I am not a runner, I am not allowed into The Maze, for good reason, but Ma was out there and despite their best efforts, they could not find her. There is only one thing more important to me when trying to keep The Glade in order, and that is Ma. Ma over anything, so I went into The Maze and I broke the rules, but I brought her back, alive, and because of that it was worth it. Because Ma was a loss we wouldn’t have recovered from.”  
“Slowpokes, what are you nattering about?” Ma calls from her place next to the targets. “Are we going to shoot or not?”  
Cleo takes her bow and after showing off for a moment to alarm Thomas she hands the bow to Ma as she collects the stray arrows. Ma shoots and her shots have improved. She hits almost all the targets. She hands the bow to Thomas and he watches her as she shows him. He watches her so intently and Cleo can’t help but smile at how at ease Ma looks next to him. He takes the bow and misses terribly but she adjusts his aim and using the skills Cleo had taught her, in turn teaches him. Cleo collects the last of the stray arrows and turns as Ben coming from seemingly nowhere tackles Thomas to the ground.  
“Ben!” Ma yells as he attacks Thomas. Cleo is over there in an instant, pulling Ben off Thomas who is winded and, on the floor, struggling to breathe. Ben is screaming at Thomas in almost unintelligible anger. Cleo tries to shake Ben out of it, his skin warm to touch, eyes bloodshot.  
“Ma tell me it is a fever,” Cleo says knowing it isn’t. Ma shakes her head from where she is checking Thomas is okay and wasn’t impaled by an arrow on his landing. Cleo sighs and while holding the boy, almost her size and a half, still with both arms behind his back, she reaches around and tugs at the bottom of his shirt, lifting it just enough to see the sting mark on his stomach. She and Ma share a look of despair but tragical familiarity. “He has been stung.”  
“He attacked me,” Thomas manages.  
“He isn’t in his right mind,” Ma says helping him to his feet. “He has been stung.”  
“That is bad isn’t it?” Thomas says. Cleo nods.  
“We have to take him to Alby.”  
“You know what he will do,” Ma says, trying not to look like she might cry.  
“What Alby always does, whatever needs to be done.”


	6. Chapter 6

Watching Ben be pushed out into The Maze while Ma buries her face in Cleo’s shoulder is one of the harder moments of Cleo’s time in The Glade. Sending anyone out into The Maze is never easy, but especially hard when today was going so well, and after what Ma just went through, forcing someone into that inevitably worse fate, is heart-breaking. Not that Cleo would ever let it show on her face. 

“If it is hard to bear. I'll hold the weight,” Cleo sings, looking into the flames as they flicker up and around.  
“I'll hold the weight,” Ma replies.  
“If there are things you ain't. I'll compensate,” Cleo leans into Ma as Ma takes her turn.  
“I'll compensate.”  
“But you should never blame yourself. Put the blame on everybody else. 'Cause they don't see what I see,” Cleo is keeping it low toned on the basis that The Glade is rather sombre tonight. She doesn’t want to make Ma pretend to be anymore okay than she is already pretending. Cleo understands that Ma feels things more than most people. She cares deeply. “If no one understands. I'll understand.”  
“I'll understand,” Ma places her head on top of Cleo’s. She knows what Cleo is up to, she always knows what Cleo is up to in the end, it is like her talent.  
“If you get left behind,” Cleo smiles through the fire at Thomas who is watching them both, eyes mostly fixed on Ma, looking lost. Cleo wishes she knew what to say. She is so used to knowing what to say to whom to get the desired response. But not him, not Thomas, he is nearly impossible to read.  
“I will rewind,” Ma glances in the same direction and her eyes land on Thomas as Cleo’s had before her. She can’t help but notice him, he seems so strange yet so familiar to her, like she knew him in another life, or before this one. But she assumes that cannot be the case, yet it could be, how would she know.  
“But you should never blame yourself. Put the blame on everybody else. 'Cause they don't see what I see. No, you should never blame yourself. Put the blame on everybody else.”  
“You should never blame yourself. Put the blame on everybody else. 'Cause they don't see what I see.” Ma pulls herself up from the fire. “I am heading to bed, see you soon?”  
“Soon,” Cleo reassures her, giving her hand a squeeze before she walks into the dark. Some of the boys disperse and head to the bed. So, Thomas and Newt come to sit by Cleo as she hums quietly to herself. “I am sorry, I almost believe you were having fun before that all happened,” Cleo says to Thomas without turning to look at him.  
“I was,” Thomas says. “You and Ma were very friendly, especially to a stranger.”  
Newt says nothing, there are many things in this exact moment that he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He knows that he doesn’t have any right to say half the things he wants to say and he has no excuse to say the other half. So, he just doesn’t look at either of them and focuses on the fire.  
“Newt asked us to keep an eye on you, so we didn’t that,” Cleo says. She looks at him for a moment, his face illuminated by the flames. She notices the smallest details for just a moment before remembering she shouldn’t look at him for too long.  
“No one knows how to show anyone around like the girls,” Newt says. Sensing his tension, Cleo feels the need to draw the attention away from herself.  
“You and Ma really hit it off, which is nice to see,” Cleo says. Newt looks at her, searching for a clue in her motives, in trying to understand her quick change of tone. “She is very sweet Ma, she sees the best in people, where I would often see the worst. She has the ability to take even the darkest of times and bring light. She saved me, when she arrived, I was barely recognisable as the girl I tried to be, she reminded me who I was, what I was meant to do. Ma is special, and she sees the better of people, but she also isn’t naive, I trust her judgement and if she likes you, you’re someone worth liking. But you made her laugh today, quite a few times and after the time she has had lately, she needed that, and she doesn’t get that very often. She is my best friend and I would die to see her smile, so thank you Thomas, for that.”  
“I think you give me too much credit,” Thomas says, poking the fire with a stick. “Being around her is easy, she is welcoming and kind.”  
“I think you are doing incredibly well for a greenie,” Cleo says.  
“I think he has had a rough way to start,” Newt says. “Between yesterday and today.”  
“Nature is constantly trying to balance, yesterday was an incomparable win, we had to lose somehow,” Cleo mumbles.  
“You say no one ever gets their memories back?” Thomas says out of nowhere.  
“No one has yet,” Newt says. “I know the idea of not knowing who you were is daunting mate, but we all manage, we figure out who we are, not who we were.”  
“It’s not that” Cleo says looking at Thomas, “is it? It is something else.”  
“Ma seems, oddly familiar but I can’t put a finger on it,” Thomas says.  
“Some of us have that, like a ghost of a memory, we think it is just our brains trying to compensate for being surrounded by strangers, we latch on to someone, someone comforting often, and our brain convinces us that we recognise them, but it is another side effect of The Maze, it isn’t real, or at least we have no reason to believe it is,” Cleo says.  
“I thought I recognised Cleo when I arrived,” Newt admits. Cleo turns to him, confused. “I didn’t, obviously but as soon as I saw her, I felt calm, like she was something I recognised in a world of things I didn’t.”  
“You never told me that,” Cleo says.  
“Why would I?” Newt asks. “It sounds ridiculous.”  
“No,” Cleo says, turning away from the both of them. “No, it doesn’t.”  
“Anyway, Thomas, we should head to bed, leave the girl in peace, she has had a long day saving your ass,” Newt says grabbing a handful of Thomas’s shirt and pulling up with him.  
“Goodnight Cleo,” Thomas says.  
“Goodnight Thomas.”  
“Goodnight,” Newt pauses for a moment, considering his options, but remembering this morning he settles on the second option, “Cleo.”  
“Goodnight Newt,” she says. She walks them walk away before turning back to the fire. A stone from the surrounding circle has fell into the firepit and she reaches into the flames to retrieve it.  
“You could burn yourself,” Gally says startling her.  
“Only if you bloody scare me like that,” Cleo says laughing it off as she places the rock back where it belongs.  
“Scared, wasn’t sure you could feel that,” he says.  
“Fear is one of the things I am well acquainted with Gally, I just know how to handle it,” Cleo says.  
“How to hide it,” he corrects her.  
“Are you just here to scare me or did you want something?” she asks.  
“Why didn’t you just wait till morning, the fire would have died out, the stones would be cold, you could have avoided any risk,” he says.  
“Some more stones could have fallen in before then, you don’t wait until the rain stops the patch the whole in the roof, else the whole roof might fall down, as soon as you notice a problem you work towards fixing it, you get your house in order Gally, else it might fall down on you,” she says.  
“I came here to apologies,” he says. Cleo stops and stares at him.  
“Pardon?” she asks.  
“Don’t be a pain about this, I came to apologise, for yesterday, my behaviour was… out of bounds,” he says. “And I am sorry.”  
“Gally,” Cleo starts.  
“You don’t have to accept my apology but I needed to say it,” he says.  
“I don’t think you need to apologise,” Cleo says. Gally looks surprised, he notices they are completely alone by the fire, everyone else has already gone to bed and in the light Cleo looks so small, he had never thought of her as small before, but it was clear she was. She always carried such a presence that it never occurred to him, how small she actually was, how almost fragile looking for someone so fierce. “You were being honest Gally, and I don’t like to deter honesty. I believe in honesty. I try my best to live my life by honesty. And we aren’t perfect, we make mistakes but you may have got mad but I don’t think that was a mistake… You were simply honest with me.”  
“Okay, then I am not sorry,” he says. She nods.  
“Good,” she says and walks past him. “Goodnight Gally.”  
“Goodnight.”

Ma is still awake but hardly, as Cleo climbs into her bed. “You okay?” Ma whispers, voice laced with sleep.  
“I am okay, just feeling a little odd,” Cleo says. Ma rolls over to look at her.  
“Something happen?”  
“Gally apologised to me,” Cleo says. Ma laughs.  
“No really,” she says. Cleo just looks back at her with a smile. “No way… why?”  
“I don’t know, he thought he had been out of bounds,” Cleo says shrinking into her blanket.  
“He can be sometimes,” Ma admits.  
“Yeah, but I thought if anything he had been remarkably behaved lately.”  
“Strange, I doubt I will ever really understand that one.”  
“And if you don’t, none of us idiots stand a chance. Goodnight Ma.”  
“Goodnight.”


	7. Chapter 7

Cleo walks back from the side of The Glade to pass Ma and Thomas who are sat on the grass talking. “Slacking off already greenie?” Cleo teases.  
“I was helping out for about ten minutes before Frypan told me I was more of a hindrance than a help,” he says holding up his hands in defeat.  
“Ouch, and that coming from Frypan, you should be ashamed,” Cleo laughs. Chuck walks over and hands both the girls a picked wildflower in turn before heading back to whatever he was doing before. Cleo looks at the small purple flower in her hand and the yellow one in Ma’s. She flops down on the ground next to Ma and takes the flower from her hand.  
“Oi,” Ma says, but Cleo just hushes her as she weaves the two flowers into a small section of Ma’s hair.  
“Are you okay?” Thomas asks, gesturing to Cleo’s arm. A small red lump on her lower arm is appearing and she sighs at the sight.  
“Bloody bugs,” she mumbles. In reality the mark is a bee sting. Cleo just returned from her covert mission to obtain some honey for the cookies she makes, but she wouldn’t ever tell them that.  
“A bug did that?” Thomas asks.  
“The bugs in this place can be vicious I would have you know,” Ma says.  
“That they can,” Cleo says. “There,” she finishes adjusting the flower. “Beautiful, as always.”  
“I shall take your word for it,” Ma says.  
“It looks lovely,” Thomas says, the words just falling from his lips a little unintentionally. Both the girls look at him in sync and chuckle a little. “I was just agreeing with you,” Thomas says a little flustered.  
“Okay, and with that, I need to take your place with Frypan and make sure we actually have something to eat today,” Cleo says getting up and heading towards the kitchen tent. Ma watches her go and gently plays with the flowers in her hair.  
“You two, you would never know you hadn’t known each other forever,” Thomas says.  
“Cleo was the only thing that made sense in this place when I first got here,” Ma glances across The Glade, to Newt and Minho. Newt is nodding at what Minho is saying but he looks distracted and soon departs walking in the opposite direction to his tasks. “Then I met Newt, and Newt as you know, he is just the person you need him to be. He is wise and strong and protective, and the friend everyone needs to have. And Minho, he is like a brother, the way he watches over me, the way he always makes sure no one steps out of line, no one forgets about me. If I didn’t have Cleo, I think I would survive, like she did before me, but I don’t think I could be the person I am. Cleo is like family. I don’t remember mine but I am sure she is every much a bit like family as whatever family I had was. Newt, he is my closest friend in this place, Minho like a brother, but Cleo, Cleo is like a part of me. I didn’t know I was missing until I found her…” Ma laughs a little awkwardly. “Sorry, that probably sounds a little odd.”  
“Not at all,” Thomas looks at Ma, her words resounding with him more than she should know. Ma reminds him of something, a safety, a comfort, a home, if he could image what that was before. She seems so familiar and the idea it is a ghost of a memory isn’t cutting the edge off the feeling that he just wants to be close to her at all times. To help her. To keep her safe. To make up for something somehow, like he owes it to her. He can’t understand what it is, but there is something churning deep inside of him, something like longing, that tells him he just can’t leave her side. 

“Where have you been?” Frypan whines at Cleo.  
“Need I remind you that this-,”  
“Isn’t your job, yes I know, but I would crack without you and you know it,” Fry says. Cleo laughs.  
“Sometimes it feels like this whole place might fall apart without me,” she says, picking up what she needs.  
“I don’t doubt that it would,” Newt says from the doorway. Cleo looks at him and quickly back at her task.  
“No,” Frypan says before Newt even speaks. “She just got here; I need her help.”  
“Just a few minutes?” Newt asks.  
“If you need something Newt, I can find you after I am done?” Cleo says softly, not looking up. Newt doesn’t respond and she drags her eyes to meet his. “Unless it is urgent?”  
“No, not urgent, I am sure we can talk about it later, I won’t interrupt,” he says before exiting.  
“What did you do this time to have second in command on your back?” Fry asks. Cleo stares at her task with as much concentration as she can muster, trying her upmost to not look even remotely concerned despite her panic.  
“I have absolutely no idea…”

Cleo hands Thomas a cookie and he looks at her. “Spoiling the greenie,” Minho says reaching around her and grabbing one from the pile. “Now is that fair?”  
“I am not spoiling anyone, except maybe you,” Cleo says, sticking her tongue out at him as she throws him an extra cookie. He winks and heads to get some actual food that resembles a meal.  
“These are great,” Thomas says. “How do you make them?”  
“She won’t tell you that,” Ma says, as Cleo taps her nose. “It is the most guarded secret in The Glade. She won’t even tell me.”  
“Wow,” Thomas says, “very secretive indeed.”  
“Hush both of you,” Cleo laughs. “Has anyone seen Newt?”  
“Why?” Ma asks, a little too much curiosity in her voice.  
“Because he came looking for me earlier and I kind of blew him off with a promise that I would find him later, and I can’t find him,” Cleo says slowly.  
“Newt is usually pretty easy to locate,” Ma says, “especially if he knows you are looking for him.”  
“Do you blow him off often?” Thomas asks. Ma laughs.  
“No, she doesn’t,” Ma says.  
“I do a lot more lately, but he was looking for me first Thomas, he wouldn’t be avoiding me, Newt isn’t like that,” Cleo says.  
“Ma,” comes a slightly out of breath Chuck.  
“Yeah,” Ma says looking at him softly until she notices the distress in his face and her expression changes fast. “What is wrong.”  
“We need our med-jack,” he says.  
“What idiot got themselves injured this time?” Cleo sighs.  
“Newt.”  
“Shuck,” Cleo says getting to her feet and following Ma. 

Ma cleans the blood away and Cleo stands, arms crossed watching her fix him up. He was helping and got hit my unsecured plank, a hit directly across the back of the head. Nothing serious, just a little tear of the skin and a headache, but Cleo is distinctly unimpressed. “And she was just beginning to think you were avoiding her,” Ma says gesturing towards Cleo with a flick of a hand. Newt chuckles.  
“I wouldn’t dare, the wrath of Cleo is something I know better than to incur,” Newt says.  
“So, you get yourself nearly knocked unconscious?” Cleo says. “Yeah, that makes me not mad at you at all.”  
“I got injured specially to annoy you love don’t worry,” he says sarcastically. Ma raises an eyebrow but says nothing.  
“I was just suggesting if maybe you use your head for something other than to catch falling wood, that could be helpful,” Cleo smiles a little to let him know she is joking. Newt understands, this is how Cleo shows her concern these days. She used to just show her concern with a look and some reassuring words, but that was before, now she thinly veils it with sarcasm and criticism for the situation he got himself in. “What did you want anyway, since I finally found you.”  
Newt looks at her for a really long time, like the words are on his tongue but can’t make it past his lips. “I think the wood knocked it right out my head, I can’t remember,” he says. Cleo rolls her eyes.  
“And I was so excited to find out.”


	8. Chapter 8

_-Flashback-  
“Go near her and she is perfectly capable of taking you down,” Alby warns the greenie, who is watching Cleo from a safe distance as she directs some builders around the tree as they construct a platform. “She is fierce that one.”  
“Why is there only one girl?” the greenie asks.   
“We know the answer to that as much as we know the answer to why any of us are here,” Alby says. “But I tell you with warning, greenie, she could floor you, in a moment, she may look small, but she has skill.”  
“Why do you assume-,”  
“Because everyone has the exact same thought when they first see her, why is she here, more so than why are we here, she seems so out of place, and I feel the need to point out Cleo isn’t what she seems, I have known her almost as long as I have known The Glade, and trust me, she is a force to be reckoned with.”  
Cleo glances over, almost sensing she is being talked about. “Remember your name yet?” she yells to the greenie. He hadn’t, not until that very moment she asked him.  
“Gally,” he calls back at her. She nods, side to side, like she was rattling the name around her head to get used to it.   
“Nice to meet you Gally, now you have your senses, would you like to actually help?” she asks. Alby laughs.   
“You should do as she says,” Alby laughs. “She can be scary when she wants to be.” _

Gally is watching Ma and Cleo as they try to organise the mess some of the boys made of the supplies. Newt watches him watching them, with a strange intensity. “Gally do you have a problem mate?” he asks after watching maybe a few minutes too long.   
“No,” Gally says trying to pretend he wasn’t doing what he was doing.   
“Look I know she broke the rules, I get that, but she got Ma back, can’t you just be grateful?” Minho asks.   
“You understand nothing,” Gally says to Minho. Newt places a hand on Minho’s chest as he moves towards Gally, holding him in place without a word. “You want to act tough?”  
“Gally I could take you on any day,” Minho says, leaving as to not waste his breath arguing with someone who never believes they are wrong.   
“Do you just like to pick fights Gally, or can you really not handle your position here?” Newt asks. “Because if you are truly threatened by now having as much power in this dynamic as a girl-,”  
“You understand nothing either,” Gally says. “I am not threatened by Cleo or Ma, I don’t disregard her authority, I understand why she has it, I respect why she has it.”  
“Then what the hell is your problem mate?” Newt asks, tone a little angry now.   
“Why do you care?” Gally asks.   
“Maybe because it is my job to care, I am supposed to make sure that everything is in working order as Alby asks and this puts a kink in it all, so maybe it my job to care why you are acting up,” Newt says.   
“I struggle to believe that Newt,” Gally says. “I think there is something else, something about them specifically that is getting to you. I don’t know if you still haven’t got over your own experience with The Maze and this is just some kind of trauma you have had dragged up again, or if it is something else. But I think if you really had an issue with things not being in order, the other night at the campfire, with Thomas, would have been more of you issue, than Cleo. Wouldn’t you say?”  
“We let a lot of rule breaking slip that day, just that day given the circumstances, but don’t think I haven’t forgotten you started a fight,” Newt says.   
“Don’t think I buy your act for a minute Newt, whatever it is, that is really behind that anger, those balled fists,” Newt glances at his own hands which he hadn’t realised were balled into fists, “it isn’t that.” Gally tries to walk away but Newt isn’t having it.   
“I don’t think you are in a place to talk,” he says. Gally scoffs.   
“Maybe not, but if I lose myself in something as trivial as anger, I get punished, no real harm done, but you Newt, you are smarter than that, Cleo seems to claim so. You are a vision; you always know what to do. Real leader material, no wonder Alby chose you. So if you, with your head on straight and your ability to see objectively, if you lose yourself in something as trivial as anger, that is more of a problem isn’t it?”  
Thomas approaches as Gally walks away and Newt unballs his hands, trying to understand why Gally of all people could get under his skin today. “Everything okay?” Thomas asks.   
“I don’t know,” Newt says. “There is no real gauge for normal around here, I can’t tell lately what is strange behaviour and what isn’t.”  
“I haven’t been here long enough to be any help with that,” Thomas admits. “But the girls seem fine,” his gaze follows Newts to where Ma and Cleo sit.   
“Yeah, and they are the most entitled to be acting abnormally, so,” Newt sighs.   
“Gally just seems that way to me, argumentative,” Thomas says, sensing the discourse.   
“Yeah, I guess as long as I have known him, he has been angry, angry at The Maze, angry at The Glade, angry at our situation, the lifestyle, at whoever or whatever put us here, and the reasons why, at the lack of memory, all of it,” Newt says, “and we are all allowed to be angry. We are all allowed to feel cheated by this, but Gally seems to let it fuel him. It is like without the anger he wouldn’t have anything to hold onto.”  
“That is almost worrying.”   
“It is very worrying indeed mate, but it hadn’t really been an issue before.”  
“And now?”  
“And now I am worrying it is about to be.”

“You are a lot younger than most of us, aren’t you?” Thomas asks Chuck. Chuck shrugs.  
“I guess, I mean I don’t know exactly, but I seem to be, there was someone else, younger once, back in the beginning, but even The Glade can be a dangerous place,” Chuck says, he is whittling away at the same piece of wood he always is. Thomas nods, understanding. He is beginning to do that a lot, beginning to understand The Glade, the life he has been thrown into.   
“It must be hard,” he says. Chuck shrugs.   
“I miss my parents,” he says. “I don’t remember them, but it’s like they are still rattling around in my mind somewhere, like, I can’t explain. Something is clinging on, I can’t reach it but it is there.” He doesn’t speak for a moment before adding. “But Ma really helps, Cleo too, but Ma really gets it.”  
“She seems pretty special,” Thomas says.   
“She is, she really is.”

_-Flashback-  
“You sleep so high up?” Ma asks, looking at the watch tower. Cleo nods.   
“I like to see what is going on around me, besides being high up I feel safer, something about ground level is… vulnerable,” Cleo says. Ma looks back at the boys who are tending to their jobs. “Ma, I don’t mean it like that, the boys are sweet as anything, and if you tell them to shuck off, they will, besides they won’t even consider trying anything, even if you wanted them too, it is against the rules and no one crosses Alby.”  
“So… the grievers?” Ma asks looking back at The Maze entrance.   
“Maybe, but I feel it runs deeper than that, like something I can’t quite remember, I just, I don’t like being on the ground, just like I don’t like being out in the open, I can’t explain it, it’s just a feeling,” Cleo explains. “You want to come up?” Ma takes Cleo’s extended hand and climbs into the watch tower.   
“It is calm up here,” she says looking out across The Glade.   
“That is the desired effect,” Cleo admits. “Are you doing okay? This place is overwhelming at first…”  
“I think I am okay,” she says. “I don’t really have anything to compare it to.”  
“I suppose that is true,” Cleo says leaning against the trunk of the tree.   
“I thought you don’t do the jobs like they do,” Marie says. Cleo turns to her perplexed but quickly spots the blade in her hand.   
“That isn’t mine,” Cleo says.   
“Oh,” Ma says. “Someone else come up here often?” Cleo sense Marie is trying to joke with her and she tries to encourage that with a smile, but seeing that in her watch tower twinges something in her chest.  
“Not really, not anymore, that belongs to Newt,” Cleo explains. Marie looks at her for a moment, and her eyes start to change, like she wants to suggest something. “No, it isn’t like that,” Cleo says, “we aren’t even really talking right now. Besides… the rules.”  
“Aren’t the rules in place for specific reasons, surely if you fell in love,” Marie says.  
“The rules are based on the idea we can’t share relationships so we don’t have them, they aren’t mutually beneficial for everyone in The Glade, whereas everything we do is, so we don’t have them. Love doesn’t really come into it,” Cleo says. _

“Do you think about the day you arrived?” Thomas asks Newt.   
“Not often, so much has happened, I have many other things to think about,” Newt says. “I know for you it is all so new, all so vivid, every day feels like it is seared into your brain, but the longer you are here, the more the important days stick out and the rest just fade into a blur, and with no end in sight… I think you will get the grip of that soon enough, and you will think about the box less and less, until it is barely a memory. It is best that way, otherwise you spend all your time just trying to remember what came before,” Newt sighs, “which does no one any good mate.”  
“Fair enough,” Thomas says. “What days are important then, what do you remember?”  
“I remember one or two of my early days, I remember some bad days, I remember some people arriving, not much happens in The Glade,” Newt says.   
“You remember Ma arriving?” Thomas asks. Newt laughs.   
“You really need to get over that,” Newt says, “I get it, but the girls are off limits.”  
“It isn’t like that,” Thomas says stumbling over his own words. “She just-,”  
“Feels familiar,” Newt says. “It is easy to mistake that for… other things.”  
“Speaking from experience?” Thomas asks.   
“Hey mate I am just trying to help,” Newt says. “But yeah, I remember Ma arriving, how could I forget, that was a day. Not only did another girl turn up in the box which was a big deal, but also, I made the mistake of leaving my tools in the watch tower when I went looking for Cleo, and she went off.”  
“Several of you guys have said that, but Cleo seems so level headed,” Thomas says.   
“She is, everything she does, she does intentionally, she can figure out what to do and say, it’s like she sees every outcome and chooses accordingly, but equally, she has a few soft spots, and as much as she would never admit to weakness and would likely… poison me for suggesting this… some things get to her. When they do, she can have a temper, and she always keeps it well and never pushes over boundaries but we know it’s there. Under the surface, we have all seen it once or twice. She is sweet and she cares and she is so clever, but you do not want to cross her. By any means.”  
“And leaving some tools in her watch tower was enough to make her explode?” Thomas says.   
“It was the last straw in a long line of issues,” Newt says. Thomas looks a little disbelieving.   
“You and Cleo?” he laughs. “Gally I would believe, but you two, you seem… close.”  
“We are,” Newt says. “We used to be closer, but things change in The Glade, I think some days she only bothers to talk to me because of Ma.”  
“You and Ma are close, she told me that you were basically her closest friend.”  
“I am very glad she feels that way, Ma and I, I think she understands some things that even Cleo couldn’t about me, or maybe she would just rather not understand, after everything with Cleo, I don’t know what I would have done without Ma,” Newt says. Thomas looks away and Newt rolls his eyes. “Calm down lover-boy, it isn’t like that.”  
“Don’t call me that,” Thomas says. “Besides I have told you, she just-,”  
“Feels familiar, feels like home, yeah,” Newt’s eyes land on Cleo as she is handing out food, “I know.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Do you remember any of their names?” Chuck asks, looking at the sky.   
“I barely remember my name,” Thomas says.   
“I barely remember anyone else’s names,” Cleo says.   
“That’s not true,” Ma says, “and you know some of them.”  
“So, do you,” Cleo points to a section of the sky. “Andromeda.”  
“Orion,” Ma says pointing.   
“I like that story,” Chuck says. “Will you tell it to me?”  
“Sure,” Ma says. “Orion was the son of Poseidon with the gift to walk the waves, one day when walking the waves, he came across an island, where he stayed and drank and fell in love with a mortal woman, she was the daughter of the king and the king in anger blinded Orion. Orion wandered blind across the land until someone guided him to the God of the sun who healed his eyes, only for Orion to seek vengeance and when failing to find the king that blinded him, he took his anger out on every creature that crossed his path. This blind rage angered the gods, who sent a monster to kill him, but even as he died, the goddesses asked to have him laid amongst the stars.”  
“I remember that story a little differently,” Cleo whispers to Ma.   
“That version is more Chuck friendly” Ma whispers back. Cleo understand why certain aspects of that story might be left out, but she doesn’t understand why they remember it at all, they remember certain stories and certain songs, but they don’t have a connection that Cleo can understand, there is no rhyme and reason, no logic behind it. Cleo thought she had a reason once, maybe, but when Ma arrived and remembered all the same stories and songs, the theory was displaced. The boys seem to think that whatever it was that took our memories from us, it effects girls differently. But Cleo isn’t so sure, it feels like whoever and whatever put them here, never did anything by accident, none of this seems accidental.   
“You going to join us star gazers?” Newt asks, coming from the fire.   
“Sure,” Chuck says jumping up from the grass.   
Around the fire Alby is talking to Minho and the runners, it seems serious. “Ma, Cleo,” Alby beckons them over with a hand. “Ben, when he lost it, where were you?”   
Cleo and Ma share a glance. “Far side,” Ma says after a moment.   
“So, he can’t have come back too much more before you,” Alby says to Minho.   
“Are you trying to figure out where he went?” Cleo asks.   
“We want to figure how he got stung,” Alby says.   
“Maybe it was another Arthur situation,” Ma says. Arthur was a runner, he was fast and he was agile but even the best of the runners aren’t immune to the occasional stumble, and he fell. Where he happened to fall was a bunch of missed Griever stings and even though it was a light scratch, it was enough, the effects were delayed but the infection took hold eventually.   
“Maybe,” Alby says but he doesn’t sound so sure.   
“You don’t think Grievers are actually attacking in the day time, do you?” Cleo asks.   
“It is a concern, but I don’t have any proof until we figure out what happened with Ben,” Alby says.   
“Give us one day,” Minho says, “to try and find it out, before you go and look.”  
“You want to go into The Maze?” Ma asks Alby.   
“I think it could be beneficial, but I will give you and the runners one day,” Alby agrees with Minho. “But we need to figure this out.”  
“We will,” Minho says.   
“I really don’t think you should be considering that course of action,” Cleo says. Alby gives her a look and tries not to say anything. “Have you talked to Newt about it?”  
“Did you?” he asks, a little too fast, a little too unintentionally.   
“I talked to you all about it, over and over,” Cleo responds defensively. The tonal shift gets some of the other Glader’s attention. It is so rare that Alby and Cleo have discourse, most of them have never really seen them disagree.   
“You know what I mean,” Alby says, “besides I get the last say-,”  
“And you made Newt second for a reason, you trust his judgment and I think he would agree with me on this,” Cleo says.   
“What wouldn’t he agree with you on?” Alby asks. Newt has quietly approached but said nothing.   
“You would be surprised with the amount we disagree on,” Cleo says. Newt feels that, catches the sentence like a punch in the stomach, pushing the air out of his chest. He is unsure why it hurts so much to hear her say it when he knows exactly why she did. Because she believes it to be true.   
“Can I settle anything here?” Newt asks when he catches his breath back.   
“Alby is talking about going into The Maze,” Minho sighs. Newt doesn’t blink, he knows his options and he picks quickly.   
“Alby knows what is best, if he thinks he can go into The Maze, it isn’t my place to say otherwise,” Newt says. It takes all that Cleo has to not turn to Newt and speak her mind, but she grits her teeth and nods.   
“See, like I said, we disagree on a large amount,” Cleo says, “but Alby I never said I doubted you, I said at the moment I don’t think it is the best idea to rush into The Maze without,” Alby looks like he is about to laugh at her, but she continues, “giving the runners a chance first. Even I did that.”  
“One day,” Alby repeats. “And then if you don’t find anything, I am looking.”

Ma is singing and Cleo is leaning into the fire, watching the flames. Thomas is watching Ma, like she is the only thing in the world. “There will come a soldier. Who carries a mighty sword. He will tear your city down, oh lei-oh lai-oh Lord,” Ma sings.   
Newt takes seat next to Cleo and she looks at him, for a very long time, and he holds her gaze, he looks solemn, she can’t help but think. She looks lost, he can’t help but notice, like her order has been thrown out of balance. “I didn’t mean to actively stand against you,” he says.  
“You never do,” Cleo says, a hint of laughter in her voice, “and yet time and time again, we disagree.”  
“He will tear your city down, oh lei-oh lai-oh Lord. There will come a poet,” Ma sings, eyes flickering over to the two of them.   
“I feel you remember the disagreements with more emphasis than the agreements, we used to agree on a lot,” Newt says.   
“I advise staying away from sentiments that require the words ‘we use to’ if I were you Newt, or we could be here all night.”  
“Whose weapon is His word. He will slay you with His tongue, oh lei-oh lai-oh Lord. He will slay you with His tongue, oh lei-oh lai-oh Lord,” Ma senses something is off but keeps singing, not taking her eyes off Cleo who has turned away from Newt to stare into the fire once more.  
“Cleo I am not sure what it is that you still expect from me, something I should say or do, I have considered every possibility and I cannot find what it is you are waiting on, some days it is like we are fine, then days like today-,”  
“You are reminded by the distance between who we were then and who we are now,” Cleo says.   
“I want to be the way we were then, do you think that is possible?” he asks, and when she doesn’t answer or turn to look at him, he reaches forward and with one finger tilts her chin up and toward him, ensuring she looks him in the eyes. She freezes under his touch, suspended in time for but a moment. 

_-Flashback-  
Cleo and Newt are sat in the shade of the trees, Cleo is talking so much, in her own head that she can’t even tell Newt to reminding her to breathe. He grabs her face with both hands and her words stop. He looks at her, a little worried for a moment before she starts to laugh. He drops one of his hands and laughs. Cleo laughs a little while longer until she notices her face still resting in one of Newt’s hands. She looks at his hand and then back at him. “Newt,” she laughs. “Someone might get the wrong idea.”  
“Let them,” he laughs. “I finally got you to calm down.”  
“You are willing to get into a fight with Alby for that?” she asks. He looks down and then back at her.   
“For you? Sure, I’ll get into a fight with Alby,” he says. She laughs and shoves him jokingly, pulling away from his touch.   
“Behave.”   
“Fine, fine,” he can’t stop smiling though, and neither can she as she looks up through the light sifting through the trees. _

“There are very few things I would like more in this world to return to the way we were Newt,” Cleo says, letting her face rest in his hand for a moment before pulling away, “but I doubt we can get there tonight.”  
“There will come a ruler. Whose brow is laid in thorn…”  
“Goodnight Newt,” Cleo says leaving the fireside. She taps Ma’s shoulder as she passes, and walks back to the watch tower, the sound of Ma’s gentle song the only thing stopping her from falling apart.


	10. C h a p t e r  1 0

Ma and Cleo are waiting by the entrance to The Maze for Minho and the rest of the runners to return. Cleo is a little impatient and Ma can sense it but she understands why. There is a lot waiting on it. And the runners are running later than anyone anticipated.   
Minho appears within sighs and Cleo physically relaxes for a moment but as soon as she spots two other runners carrying another the concern creeps back in. “Ma, I think you are needed,” Cleo says.   
“I think you are right,” Ma says rushing over to see what happened.   
Turns out, one of the runners had an accident, and as far as Ma can tell has snapped the bone in his leg in several places. As soon as Cleo heard Ma say that she felt a sickness in the depth of her stomach, she has seen that before, and they aren’t fond memories. On top of the injured runner, none of them found anything, no evidence, no reason for what happened to Ben. So, Alby has his heart set on going out himself and retracing Ben’s steps. Which is not only unsettling to Cleo but Ma too.   
Ma isn’t so willing to admit it, but she holds her breath each and every time the runners go out into The Maze, she has since she first arrived, but even more so since her own ordeal. It has never been a safe place, not since she has been here and not before. But lately it feels even more dangerous, more people are getting injured, or lost. It is like The Maze has decided they got complacent. It is like The Maze is changing, more than it does normally. Like The Maze is getting more dangerous on purpose. It has taken on tactics and tricks. Ma can’t explain it beyond a feeling, but it is similar to the feeling she had the day she walked into The Maze. Helplessness. Then there was that child’s crying… That is new, and certainly, as far as she and Cleo found it, very dangerous.   
“What happened?” Newt asks. Cleo hears his voice and fixes her sight on Ma who is still wrapping the break.   
“Broken leg,” Ma says, highly focused. The runner, Alec, is barely conscious.   
“Been there mate,” Newt says, “you’ll pull through.”   
“Guess you’d know,” Alec winces. Without another word Cleo ups and leaves, refusing to meet Newt’s eye. 

_-Flashback-  
“He has broken his leg in three places Cleo,” Minho says. “Aren’t you going to talk to him, he is worse for it…”  
“No, I am not going to talk to him Minho,” Cleo says leaning over the edge of her watch tower.   
“Come on,” he tries.   
“Don’t ‘come on’ me, Minho,” Cleo says, anger in her voice. “You might be the only other person who could understand exactly why I won’t.”   
“I don’t know what you mean,” Minho says, attempting to lie.   
“Fine, keep up the façade, I don’t care,” Cleo says, “but I am not being a part of it.”  
“Cleo-,”  
“No Minho.”  
“Think about Newt-,”  
“Like he thought about us?” _

Cleo moves to the map room, where Alby and Minho are looking over the construction of The Maze. Gally is leaning on the walls, watching. “Are you seriously thinking about this Alby, aren’t today?” Cleo asks. Alby sighs.   
“Cleo, we have known each other a very long time, and I value and respect your input, I do, but do not forget that all you’ve pulled lately hasn’t gone unnoticed, and maybe you aren’t in a place to be calling shots,” Alby says.  
“For what it is worth I actually agree with Cleo,” Gally says.   
“That must be a first,” Minho says. He continues to point around The Maze construction. Cleo watches them as they discuss the plan. Alby and Minho will be heading into The Maze tomorrow, taking the route through section eight in the hopes to find what caused Ben’s misfortune. Cleo is doubtful but doesn’t say another word. She watches the plan unfold, and scans the route for possible issues. She can’t find a valid reason to debate them other than her own logic which they’ve already dismissed, and a bad feeling, which has never stuck with Alby. A feeling isn’t a reason. 

Thomas joins Ma in the med-tent. He looks around, a little surprised by Cleo’s absence. Ma looks up at him and a faint smile appears on her lips. “Thomas, hey,” she says.   
“If I knew you were alone in here, I would have come sooner,” he says.   
“That is sweet, but this is my job,” Ma says. “I don’t expect company.”  
“Yet I rarely find you without,” he says. “Where is Cleo?”  
“I think,” Ma looks at Alec, who is asleep and settling. “This situation was a little too familiar to her, Newt had a similar accident before I arrived, broke his leg, and I think maybe seeing Alec brought it all back to her.”  
“I can imagine that would be hard on her, considering how close they used to be,” Thomas says.   
“They still are close,” Ma says, a little for herself more than anything. “They are just more complicated. I don’t know what happened exactly, Cleo doesn’t really talk about it, and Newt would rather ignore it.”  
“It is hard to believe, considering how Newt talks about her,” Thomas says. Ma chuckles lightly.   
“You don’t have to tell me, I know,” Ma says. It is quiet in the tent, there is a sadness that lingers in the air, a worry, but also an odd sense of peacefulness. Thomas moves to sit next to Ma and she smiles at him.  
“Can I ask you something?” Thomas asks.   
“Ask away,” Ma says, checking the bleeding of Alec’s leg.   
“I have this strange feeling and Cleo and Newt called them ghost memories, but I feel like they are more than that, and I know we don’t get our memories back, but I just thought I had to ask. Do I feel familiar to you, like you do to me?” he asks. Ma freezes for a moment. “Ma?” he places his hand over hers and something hits her like a wave. A vision, like a dream or pieces of memory, flashes.   
_She sees Thomas but he looks different, tidier.  
She sees water and some kind of blue liquid.   
She sees Thomas again, fuzzy but smiling.   
She hears his voice but it is disjointed.   
She can make out her name.  
She hears another voice, a woman’s voice, taking through some kind of echo. _  
“Ma,” Thomas says again bringing her back. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”  
“No Thomas,” Ma says gently squeezing his hand. “You didn’t I just- I got lost in thought, that is all.”  
“Okay, as long as I didn’t upset you,” Thomas says, “that is the last thing I wanted to do.”  
“You do,” Ma says after a moment, “feel familiar that is.”  
“I do?” Thomas asks. Ma nods.   
“I can’t explain it, but I understand what you mean, it doesn’t feel like a false feeling, it is like I knew you somehow, even before I did.”  
“I am glad I am not feeling that alone.”

“Are you going to talk about it?” Ma asks, looking to Cleo who is pretending to be asleep.   
“Talk about what Ma?” Cleo asks.   
“Alec’s injury, the way you left things earlier, anything?” Ma asks.   
“I really don’t want to talk about that right now Ma,” Cleo says rolling over. “But do you?”  
“Newt’s injury was before my time,” Ma reminds her.  
“You assume the fact it is similar to that is the only reason we might want to talk about it?” Cleo asks. “What about you, you have links to this situation too, maybe even more than me.”  
“What do you mean?”   
“You got lost out there, you had to fight off a griever, and now injuries are increasing, becoming more serious, someone got stung, somehow, in the day time, and now Alby wants to go out into The Maze,” Cleo says.   
“I understand why you are concerned ‘Leo, but you’ve always said you trust Alby’s judgment,” Ma points out.   
“Yeah, it was one thing I counted on as consistent, but lately familiar things are changing,” Cleo sighs. “Gally even took my side tonight against Alby’s plan.”  
“Okay, yeah, I am now worried too.”

From when Alby and Minho head out into The Maze in the early morning, it feels like the day drags by, minutes like hours, waiting. Ma spends most of her time tending to Alec, and Thomas keeps her company, talking about all the things they can’t remember, and the few things Ma can. Thomas asks her about what she would do if she got out. “When,” Ma corrects him, “when we get out.”  
Cleo spends the day practicing her archery, arrow after arrow, target after target, until she splinters the wooden target into pieces. She starts to whittle new ones when she notices how dark it was quickly becoming, she looks around and sees the crowd of people by The Maze entrance.   
“They really should be back by now,” Cleo whispers. Then she hears it, Ma’s yell. She can’t understand what she is saying but she recognises the fear in her tone and without bothering to put her bow down she runs across The Glade to the crowd.   
Minho and Alby are in sight, but Minho is carrying Alby who looks injured. The Maze is starting to close. Ma grips onto Cleo’s arm tight. Cleo can feel her shaking. “They aren’t going to make it,” Ma whispers. That is when they all see it for the first time, behind the boys, moving at speed, hitting the sides of The Gaze with each movement. A griever, coming up behind them. Ma loses her grip on Cleo, her breathing starting to falter. The memories of The Maze flooding back.   
“It is going to close before the griever,” Gally says.   
“And before Minho and Alby get here,” Newt says. Thomas, stood the other side of Ma, glances at Cleo and with a simple look they both agree and without another word, they rush into The Maze.   
“No!” Ma yells after them, Newt grabs her to stop her rushing forward, and to stop himself. Cleo pulls her bow from her arm as she runs. They reach Minho and Alby quickly, but the griever is also fast behind them.  
“You are both insane,” Minho says. Thomas helps taking some of Alby’s weight and Cleo steps behind them, aiming at the griever and shooting. She hits one of its legs and it stumbles temporarily.   
“Don’t stop running you idiots,” She says. She feels a hand on her arm, tugging her into a run behind the boys. She turns to look and it’s Gally, in The Maze. “Gally!”  
“Run,” he says. He keeps his hand on her arm as they run, she turns over her shoulder to shoot at the griever again, and hits its body this time.   
“You broke the rules,” Cleo pants as they run towards The Glade.   
“I know,” Gally says. “Nice shot.”  
“Thank you,” she says taking another and this time she hits in its face. It stumbles back, losing it’s footing. “That shot was better.”  
Minho and Thomas pull Alby through The Maze entrance, and fall to the floor, but Ma and Newt’s eyes are fixed on The Maze. “If I die, I am blaming you,” Gally says, moving his hand from her arm to her hand and running faster.   
“You ran into The Maze like a shank,” Cleo points out. The Maze is nearly closed as they reach it, and the griever back on their tail, but as Gally and Cleo jump only a section of Gally’s shirt gets caught in the closing Maze.   
“You first,” Gally says leaning on the closed Maze, barely able to breathe. Cleo can’t help but laugh.   
“Touché” she says basically falling into Gally as they catch their breath slumped on against the wall.   
“He got stung,” Minho says. Thomas is looking around, waiting for someone to tell them that they broke the rules, but with Gally catching his breath and Alby unconscious, there isn’t anyone to really say anything. Except for Ma, who for the first time since they met, Thomas sees is mad.   
Ma shoves Thomas. “You could have died,” Ma says, “you could have got trapped. You don’t know what it is like in The Maze.”  
“Minho and Alby would have been left to that fate if it wasn’t for Thomas,” Cleo adds from her place against the wall. Ma gives her a look.   
“And you,” Thomas says. “You nearly took that griever down.”  
“I wouldn’t be proud of that, we don’t know what happens if we anger grievers,” Gally says, relief all drained and an angry irritancy has returned. “There might be consequences.”  
“Gally you went in too,” Newt says.   
“Only because all four of them were going to get themselves killed like that,” Gally says. Gally looks at Cleo, who is looking at him puzzled. For a moment, for a brief, lovely moment she thought they might have understood each other on something, but the moment passes and they are left back at the beginning. “It was reckless, you put even more of us at risk.”  
“Once again, that recklessness, is what saved us,” Minho says.   
“Alby is stung, isn’t he?” Gally says. “I think he would have agreed, you should have left him there, and ran yourself, reduced the danger for The Glade.”  
“We are going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Minho says.   
“Don’t start a fight,” Ma says. “Just, help me take him in.”  
Ma throws a look at Cleo, checking if she is okay. She smiles at her gently and Ma nods back. Ma may not agree with Cleo’s choice to run into The Maze, but she understands it, and she knows that there is no version of events where she would have acted differently, it is just who Cleo is. Thomas and Minho and a few other Gladers help Ma talk Alby to get checked over. Most of the rest of the boys slowly walk away, but Gally hovers a moment. “Where did you get that bow and arrow anyway?” he asks.   
“I made it,” Cleo says. She can see he has gone back to being mad again, mad at the world, mad at the situation, mad at The Maze and seemingly mad at her.   
“Of course… you did,” he scoffs, walking away.   
“Thank you Gally, for coming after me,” Cleo says, “…us, all of us.” Gally says nothing and he doesn’t turn around but he smiles slightly to himself, still angry but relieved.  
Newt remains, watching Cleo at her place on the floor. “You cut that real close Cleo,” he says.  
“Don’t you think I know that?” she asks, getting to her feet. She still can’t meet his eye.   
“Can we please talk?” he asks. Cleo looks around, there is no one else in sight. She wants to run, she walks to not have this conversation because she feels something bad coming, she still feels angry and she doesn’t want to be angry at Newt, she hates being angry with him. It hurts her. She wants to tell him ‘no’ and walk away. But she knows she can’t.   
“What do you want to talk about?” She asks.   
“Why you’ve been avoiding me,” he says. Cleo sighs, she wants to deny it, but she can’t. She has been avoiding him. With what happened with Alec she can barely look at him. Alec’s injuries are so similar to Newt’s, and it just dragged up a lot of feelings she tried to keep buried, deep, deep inside of her. Looking at him brings a lump in her throat, and she struggles to breathe. Remembering Newt’s accident comes with so much hurt and rage and she didn’t want to face that. And she didn’t want to take it out on him. So, she was avoiding him. Avoiding remembering that specific day and all the things she lost.  
“Alec just…” she sighs.   
“Reminds you,” Newt says. She nods. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
“Do I?” she scoffs, “do I want to talk about it? What kind of question is that?”  
“Cleo, tell me what I am supposed to do, to say, tell me what it is that you need to hear, that I haven’t said, because I am trying to reach out to you, and I feel you keeping me away,” he says.   
“I have to,” she says. “You think I want to be away from you? Newt, you were my best friend. You were my salvation, I told you that. You knew that. You think I want to be like this?”  
“Then why-,”  
“You still haven’t apologised, all this time and you haven’t said sorry,” she says. “Not once. Not after all this time, not even once.”  
“You want me to apologise?” Newt asks. “Now? After all this time?”  
“No,” Cleo says. “Of course not.” She rakes a hand through her hair. “I wanted you to apologise back then, but you didn’t. You didn’t think you needed to?”  
“I don’t really understand what an apology will do in this case Cleo,” he says.   
“I would know you were sorry,” Cleo says, voice cracking, eyes starting to tear up. “For what you tried to put me through.”  
“Cleo,” he sighs.   
“Don’t sigh at me, don’t act like you think I am better than this,” Cleo says. “You were the one person who understood me, the one person who I was honest with about everything and you… so yeah I think you owe me an apology. Gally apologised to me, shucking Gally, Newt. And do you know what he did, so bad that that stubborn boy actually apologised to me?”  
“What?” Newt asks.   
“Nothing that needed an apology,” she says. “There are few things in this life I have ever believe I actually deserved Newt, but an apology from the person who hurt me most, I actually believe is one.”  
“So, I say I am sorry, and we just go back to the way things were?” he shakes his head, “I don’t believe that. Things aren’t that simple with you.”  
“Things aren’t that simple in life Newt, but an apology is the only thing that stands between you and me forgiving you.”  
“Forgiving me?” he demands. “Cleo the days before you had told me how much you yourself felt empty, how it never went away. You told me how much you didn’t think it was worth fighting some days, how some days you just wish you could stay still until the ivy grows over you and you became a part of The Glade. You told me your sadness, you showed me the same empty and dark I felt inside, and you have been here longer than me and it wasn’t gone. You had a death wish Cleo, you may have been scared to admit it, but you climbed the trees and you threw yourself into everything in this place not because you wanted to make a life-,”  
“I told you all that because I knew you needed to feel understood, I knew you needed to know you weren’t alone, but you are forgetting the important bit, the essential part,” Cleo says. “I told you all that, that I was empty and lost and I felt without purpose, and then I met you. I told you I may not be cured and I feel no one in this life may ever be, but I had you, and that was enough for me. But it wasn’t enough for you… I wasn’t enough for you.”  
“You don’t get to say that, you don’t get to think you have an idea about how I felt or feel, you still have that death wish Cleo, that is twice you have thrown yourself into The Maze without any regard for your own safety, or what would happen to those who are left behind if we lost you-,”  
“To those left behind?” she snaps, “are you kidding me…”   
“I am just saying we aren’t that different-,”  
“So that’s why you let me go into The Maze after Ma, isn’t it? So, you would finally have a bargaining chip in this conversation, you have been waiting for me to do something even a tenth as reckless as what you did.”  
“What about just now?”  
“What about just now?”  
“You were reckless and this time it wasn’t because it was Ma out there, so you face to face the fact you could have left her-,”  
“Don’t you dare try and bring here into this as your argument, you have no right to use Ma against me.”  
“You could have died.”  
“I wasn’t trying to,” Cleo says her scream barely a whisper, “that’s the difference.” Newt doesn’t know what to say to that. “I was trying to save our friends, I was trying to preserve our life here. I wasn’t trying to end it. You can spin whatever story you want about what happened that day but I don’t believe you. I have given up asking for the truth, I don’t need to know what happened, what you did, what you were trying to do… I just want to know you regret it. I just want to know you are sorry because I would never choose to leave you, but you tried to leave me.”  
“It wasn’t like that, you know-,”  
“No. I don’t know, because I could have never have done that to you, no matter how I felt, I could never have put you through that, and you were willing to leave me here, alone and grieving you, because you couldn’t handle it? That’s the difference Newt, I cared for you more than you ever cared for me, and for a moment I thought that wasn’t the case. For a while there it was you and me, in The Glade, making the best of this. We were soaking up the sun and we were talking and sharing time. We were keeping each other from thinking about the rest of this endless life and how horrifying the idea of this forever prison is. We were happy, for a moment, weren’t we? We were all flowers and for a moment I thought…”  
“What, what did you think?” Newt asks. She looks so sad and so angry, and he knows he deserves it and he doesn’t understand why he can’t just apologies, why he can’t just admit to what he did. Why he can’t just admit everything. He could turn this around, he could try. The last thing he wanted was to fight with her, he hates fighting with her. He hates seeing her sad, and he hates knowing he caused her pain, but he knows he has to admit to what he did. But also…maybe this was his chance, his moment. Maybe this was the time to finally get over himself, to be honest, to say what he has been trying to tell her since long before the accident.   
“It doesn’t matter what I thought, does it?” Cleo sighs. “Because I was wrong, so clearly wrong, and you showed that to me.”  
“I thought we had gotten past it,” he says. He tries to explain, he wants to explain. He knows he owes her an apology and he hates to be this stubborn but he thought they were past it.  
“Why?” She asks. “Because you can turn up at the watch tower early in the morning and call me love again like nothing happened?” She pulls some flowers from her pocket and looks at them for a moment, “because you can leave daisies on the ladder and pretend our friendship hasn’t changed since then, like all these months haven’t kept us further apart. Newt you were everything to me, you were my best friend, you were… and you tried to leave me, I can’t just- I have to go-,” She starts to walk away. She doesn’t want to cry, not in front of Newt, not again.  
“Cleo please-,”  
“No, Newt this isn’t fair,” she says. “None of this has ever been fair, but I thought, we were different because we were honest and we trusted each other and we cared. I thought, I thought I found something worth being here for, but I know you didn’t. And I can’t blame you for not caring about me as much as I cared about you, that isn’t your fault. But it still hurts.”  
Newt calls after her but she just keeps walking. Cleo walks and she walks until she hits the trees and she crashes into the trunk of a tree, she slumps down and places her head in her hands. “Newt you,” she screams into her hands, “you damn boy.” She runs a hand wet with her own tears through her hair, raking it from her face, trying to keep it from sticking to her tear-stained cheeks. “Why can’t I get over you?”

Dinner time comes and passes, darkness has completely fallen, she can hear the sounds of Ma singing, and she can see the smallest of semblance of a fire at this distance but she still can’t get off the ground. She knows she should be there. She knows Ma likely needs her and the morale definitely does. But she can’t bring herself to face them, not like this. She feels so weak and shaken. She feels like she is losing grip on everything.   
A branch cracks under someone’s feet and Cleo bolts to her feet. “Why did I know I would find you here?” Gally asks walking through the shadows. Cleo stares him down, in this darkness her puffy eyes are unnoticeable, and her tears ran out hours before. It would be nearly impossible for Gally to know she had been crying, which is important to her, she couldn’t show weakness in front of Newt, and she certainly couldn’t in front of Gally.  
“Come to call me reckless some more?” Cleo asks.   
“Yeah, since you value honesty so much, I have,” he says. She laughs at his tone.  
“Come on then,” she eggs him on. “Give me your worst.”  
“You infuriate me,” Gally says.   
“Well join the shucking club Gally, and for the record you infuriate me too,” Cleo says stepping closer to him, but he doesn’t back down this time. “You ran in The Maze too.”  
“I ran after you!” he yells back. “If I hadn’t you wouldn’t have made it.”  
“I didn’t ask you to, you broke the rules of your own choice Gally, you are being a hypocrite,” she says.   
“I am following by your example, the outcome is worth the choices, right?” he asks. “And you made it back into The Glade, worth the rules being broken.”  
“Carefully Gally, you almost sound like you care,” Cleo says. Gally places his arm on the tree she is leaning against, leaning over her, he doesn’t look her in the eye.   
“Maybe I do, maybe I do care,” he says. “I care that you don’t seem to care what happens to you. You could have died, and for what?”  
“For my friends,” Cleo snaps.   
“You are so fast to act, you don’t ever think, do you consider what could be bad for you?” Gally asks.   
“I over consider according to you, I think about everything, I calculate my every move,” she mocks.   
“Except when you don’t, except when you act like a shank,” he says. She laughs.   
“You ran into The Maze, you grabbed my arm, and you told me to run, you didn’t let go, you didn’t think about how I would slow you down, so who is the shank?” she says.   
“You never consider the danger you put yourself in, can you make any good choices when you are so impulsive?” he asks. Cleo looks at him, she is filled with anger and hurt and complete betrayal. She can barely think straight but she can feel her heart in her throat, she can heart Gally’s too. It is faster than hers and just out sync. She doesn’t know how she feels or what to do next, she feels lost. But Gally is here, and he is real and he is calling her reckless.   
“You think I am impulsive?” she asks.   
“Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes all you do is consider your options and I respect that but sometimes I just don’t understand you.”  
“I don’t either,” she says.   
“Can you promise me something?” he asks. The moonlight is reflecting in his eyes and he looks angry but serious.  
“What?” she asks.  
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, just for one day, give me a break,” he says.   
“I can’t promise that,” she says. Her stomach starts to churn in a way she is familiar with but not like this, not this violent, not with Gally.   
“Why the hell not?” he asks, barely breathes length from her face now.   
“Because I am going to do this,” she says grabbing his collar and kissing him. It makes no sense, she can barely stand Gally most the time, but right here, right now, he is the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that is calming the storm in her head. The only thing that is making her not think about Newt, about what he did, about what he tried to do. Gally pulls away and stares at her, and in the shock. Cleo must look flustered or concerned because Gally stares at her like she has never seen her before, and then without a second hesitation more, he kisses her again, and she lets him.


	11. Chapter 11

A week has passed and Cleo has been avoiding Newt, not interacted with him once. The guilt weighs on her, she feels like she is trapped under piles of stone. But avoiding Newt isn’t the worst of her guilt. She has been avoiding Ma too. Avoiding Ma is the hard part. Cleo isn’t ready to face the reality that is what she did, both with The Maze and… other things. She knows that Ma is mad at her, and she doesn’t blame her, but she also knows what Ma is like, she won’t yell at her, she won’t even want to talk about it. She can’t handle conflict. Unlike Cleo who races headfirst into it, Ma always does what she can to avoid confrontation. Besides with her hanging out with Newt all the time she couldn’t approach her if she wanted to. But the thoughts cling to her, she doesn’t know how she could reason it. Cleo did something she felt she needed to do, and because of her actions Minho and Alby are safe, even if Alby is hurt… and slowly, unnervingly and abnormally slowly, getting worse. But she knows that even if Newt was the wrong person to say it, Newt was right and Cleo didn’t act thinking about what effect it could have had on Ma. Cleo is so used to the idea she will die here, so used to the idea that her life will just be day in The Glade after day in The Glade, that she sometimes forgets the last day could come any day. That she isn’t invincible until proven otherwise, she is human, she is fallible, she is mortal.   
Ma has been avoiding Cleo for a week, she doesn’t want to but she also can’t face her. She just keeps seeing her and Thomas run into The Maze, without hesitation, like they couldn’t have died. Ma would be madder at Thomas but he has the benefit of not being here long, about not knowing the gravity of his actions, of The Maze. But Cleo, she knows how dangerous The Maze can be, she found Ma, broken and lost and she still ran straight into danger. She risked her life. Ma is grateful that everyone is okay, but there was always the chance they wouldn’t be, and Cleo put herself at risk when she wasn’t at risk to begin with. She threw herself into a dangerous situation and thought nothing of it. Ma doesn’t enjoy being mad at Cleo, but she can’t pretend she isn’t mad about what she did. Ma thinks about something Cleo says often ‘we all make choices’ and how the choice she made could have ended so much worse.   
Ma is sat with Newt who is trying to complete his tasks, he is distracted, looking across The Glade for Cleo who is trying her best to be out of sight. “Why is she avoiding you?” Ma asks after a while.   
“I upset her,” Newt says. “And I didn’t apologies.”   
“You can’t have done something that bad, Newt I haven’t ever seen you two go this long without talking,” Ma says.   
“I could say the same about you,” Newt points out.   
“I am avoiding her,” Ma points out. “Because I can’t find a way to tell her how idiotic it was for her to run into The Maze, without raising my voice.”  
“Understandable,” Newt says. Cleo comes into view as she walks across the far side.   
“Why don’t you just apologies?” Ma suggests.   
“Because she clearly doesn’t want to talk to me, and I don’t blame her, I acted like a real twat,” Newt says. “I am not sure I deserve her forgiveness.”  
“Don’t beat yourself up Newt,” Ma says. He sighs and watches her walk, she passes Gally and he looks at her for a moment as she goes. Ma watches Newt watching her, how sad he looks, how lost without her. For Ma, that is the last straw.   
Ma follows Cleo’s path across The Glade and to the watchtower. Cleo is halfway up the ladder when Ma speaks. “Can we talk?” she asks.   
Cleo pauses her movement, well aware she cannot avoid her problems forever, and she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to have this conversation with Ma, but if she doesn’t, she is no better than Newt. “Come up,” Cleo says, climbing into the watchtower, Ma follows her.   
Ma and Cleo look at each other for a long while, Cleo looks awkward and Ma saddened. Cleo bites her tongue and goes for it. “I am sorry Ma,” she says. Ma feels it, the panic rising in her chest, the hurt, the sadness.   
“I know you are,” she says. “But I still have a lot to say.”  
“And I will let you say it,” Cleo says.   
“I am grateful that Alby and Minho are safe, I am glad that they managed to make it back into The Glade,” she pauses, trying not to raise her voice, or to cry. “But you and Thomas, but especially you… what you did. That was reckless,” the use of the world reckless puts Cleo’s stomach in knots, “and I just…”  
“I’m sorry Ma, I didn’t mean to worry you.”  
“But you did,” Ma says, “you really did. Anything could have happened. You cut that so very close Cleo,” her voice rises without intention and she tries to ignore her own tears as she simple snaps. “After everything that happened, with me, with The Maze, with Alby and Ben, you just ran into The Maze! You aren’t invisible Cleo! You could have died! And where would that have left us? Left Newt-,”  
“Please don’t bring him into this,” Cleo says.   
“Or more importantly left me,” Ma says finishing her sentence. “You said you went into The Maze for me because you couldn’t lose me, you couldn’t leave me out there, couldn’t bare to think of me scared or alone. But your choices could have left me here, alone.”  
She had tried her best to ignore it when Newt said it, because it was Newt and he had no right, but Cleo had to admit, the parallels between why she is mad at Newt and why Ma is mad at her, are clear. “I am sorry Ma, the last thing I would ever want in this world is to hurt you,” Cleo says, “you know that.”  
“I know,” Ma says, voice cracking with her crying, “which is why I don’t understand how you just ran into The Maze like that…”  
“I wish I could give you a reason that would make it better, but I know that I can’t, that no matter why I did it, I still did it, and that wasn’t fair on you,” Cleo says, “you know I would never mean to do anything to hurt you, and I am sorry that I did.”  
“I know,” Ma whips her tears away. “But I still have an issue.”  
“Go on,” Cleo says, voice soft. She knows whatever issues Ma wants to raise with her are important and valid and she wouldn’t want Ma to feel any other way.   
“You have to give Newt a break,” she says. A flicker of rage plucks up in Cleo at that sentence and her jaw drops a little.   
“Pardon?” she asks.   
“You need to give Newt a break,” Ma repeats.   
“Ma, with all due respect, you don’t know what is going on with Newt and I,” Cleo says.   
“I know exactly what is going on,” Ma says. “More than either of you realise. It started with Alec’s injury, right? Brought back bad memories from Newt’s injury? I am not dumb, I know the story Minho tells, but I also know that if you think about it long enough, it doesn’t add up. That if that really was the case, it wouldn’t have driven you and him apart, he wouldn’t look the way he does when someone mentions it, and you wouldn’t leave the room when anyone talks about it.”  
“Ma…”  
“He did it to himself, didn’t he?” she asks.   
“He was trying,” Cleo can’t say it, but Ma understands. “He was in a rough place, but that doesn’t change the facts.”  
“You have to cut him some slack Cleo,” Ma says.   
“Ma, you know why I can’t do that,” Cleo says.   
“You have feelings for him, he tried to do something awful, he tried to leave you all alone without thinking about what it would do to you. It was awful and I understand why you feel everything you feel, but you are being hypocritical holding it against him this way,” she says. “You ran into that Maze, twice, without regard for your safety.”  
“I was trying to protect life, not end it,” Cleo says.   
“That argument doesn’t hold up Cleo,” Ma says. “You have every right to be mad, and he owes you an apology, and you deserve one, but he is torturing himself, he is in pain, because he can’t forgive himself for what pain he caused you. And he can’t forgive himself until you forgive him, and I know you want to. If you won’t do it for him, do it for you. You are holding yourself back from admitting how you felt, how you still feel, because you are angry, but angry isn’t good for you. It is like a sickness. You have to learn to forgive people.”  
“You can still love the people who hurt you most,” Cleo says. Ma grabs her hand.  
“And you can forgive them too,” she says. “But I do agree, he was being a little bastard.”  
“I just asked him to apologies and he couldn’t,” Cleo says.  
“He is trying, but I don’t think he knows what to do, he needs to figure it out, and I never said let him off the hook,” Ma says, squeezing Cleo’s hand, “but just, give him a little bit of a break okay. He cares about you.”  
“I blame myself for believing he cared about me more, and then,” Cleo stops as Ma gently clips the side of her head. “Ouch.”  
“That didn’t hurt,” Ma says. “You don’t know how Newt feels.”  
“I cared about him enough that I was willing to live,” she says. Ma looks away for a moment and then looks back.   
“I could use that argument on you,” she says. “Sometimes our actions don’t reflect our feelings.”  
“Sometimes” Cleo says, leaning into Ma’s shoulder. Ma plays with her hair.   
“For the record I am still mad at you,” she whispers.   
“For how long?” Cleo asks, voice quiet. Ma pauses for a moment of thought.   
“At least another ten minutes.”  
After a few hours of sitting in the watch tower and talking, Ma lets her curiosity take over. “So, you have been avoiding Newt for over a week now and I understand that,” Ma says. “The argument you had was… intense. So, it makes sense, you don’t want to face him because you are upset and you don’t want to fight anymore and you are scared if you talk to him you will. Also, he owes you an apology so he really should be the one to say something. But what I don’t understand is why you have been avoiding me, I know I have been avoiding you, but that was too easy.”  
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Cleo says, not meeting her eye.   
“See, that is not the full truth which means you haven’t been avoiding me, but you’ve been avoiding a conversation and as much as I would like to joke and say you were scared of my wrath, I think we both know me cry-yelling at you isn’t scary. And you seem nervous, you knew I wouldn’t be mad at you forever and I could never hate you, so it can’t have been that. So, there has to be something else you are avoiding talking about, something I don’t know about. Something I wasn’t there for, something you are trying to hide. I think that is exactly why you have been avoiding me,” Ma says adjusting her placement on the wooden planks next to Cleo. “You don’t keep secrets from me, at least you don’t keep things from me very well. You don’t like keeping things from me for a start, so why would you? Now, I have two ideas and one is you’ve done something you think might upset me, which is unlikely because you’re an actual angel,” Ma shoves Cleo’s shoulder and pry’s a smile from her lips, “and since you already upset me in the only way you really could it can’t be that. Second option, you are ashamed of something. See that seems the most likely, or rather the only option. But it’s you, you don’t ever do anything without a reason. Everything is well thought out, and I love that about you, it is frustrating at times, sure, but it means you have a strong logic system and I respect that. You are an impulsivity like with The Maze but that is rare. So, I can’t understand what you could have possibly done to make you not want to look me in the eyes.” When Cleo doesn’t respond the jokey nature of Ma’s accusation leaves her and she becomes more curious and concerned. “Shuck, you have done something, haven’t you?”  
“Ma please,” Cleo starts.   
“You know you can’t keep stuff from me, because I always figure it out, and you can fool anyone in this place but not me, so tell me,” she says. Cleo still won’t look her in the face and Ma nods her head a little from side to side, contemplating. “Okay then, we will play the long game,” she shuffles around to sit in front of Cleo, studying her face. “You are embarrassed about something… Like really ashamed. What did you do?” she pauses before remembering she won’t get an answer. “Fine, it has to have been the same day as you didn’t come to the fire, and the next morning you were already avoiding me. Which means you were already hiding something.” Cleo says nothing and Ma takes that as a step in the right direction. “Surely you can’t have done something by yourself…” Ma thinks for a moment but Cleo has already started to shrink into herself, she knows what is coming. “So, you had have help, so to speak for whatever it was… but everyone was accounted for at the fire.” Ma thinks for a moment more and Cleo is already with head in hands. “It can’t be that bad,” Ma says.   
“I’ll remind you of that,” Cleo mumbles. Ma replays the evening in her head.   
“Chuck was with Alby and so was Minho,” she says. “Gally left early… Gally left early” she says, she looks at Cleo. “I mean it can’t be Gally though, what could you have done with Gally’s help that-,” Ma remembers the look Gally gave to Cleo as she walked past earlier, the way he watched her, and her expression changes instantly. “Cleo. You. Did. Not.”  
“I did not what?” Cleo asks. Ma grabs her face with both hands.   
“Cleo, look me in the eyes right now and tell me you didn’t do anything involving Gally,” she says.  
“I kissed him,” Cleo says. Ma blinks, holding her Cleo’s face still. When Ma doesn’t move Cleo figures she might as well come clean. “And then he pulled away, and after a moment he kissed me again. And I let him. For like thirty minutes.”  
“You… what?” Ma asks.   
“I also have been meeting him in the woods and repeating pretty much that exact scenario every day since,” Cleo says.  
“What!”


	12. Chapter 12

“But you are in love with Newt,” Ma says after Cleo has explained, and reexplained, and emphasizes she isn’t kidding about the situation, several times.   
“Wow, slow down there,” Cleo says. “I don’t know how I feel about Newt, I think I might have been in love with him, but love is a strong word, and we don’t really know enough about anything to assume I could be in love with him. And I still have so much… going on with him.”  
“Do you have feelings for Gally?” Ma asks.   
“I have chemistry, I wouldn’t go as far as to day I have feelings,” Cleo says. “I feel like I am in control of something when I am with him. I like the way he makes me feel, but I won’t be too quick to mistake that for feelings. He makes all the bad feelings go away when I am with him.”  
“Is he a good kisser?” Ma asks.   
“I don’t exactly have any comparison,” Cleo laughs. “But I clearly like it.”  
“You and Newt never? Not even once?” Ma asks. Cleo laughs nervously.   
“No, not, not ever,” Cleo says, “I don’t think he has ever had those kinds of feelings for me. I think that was… very much just me.”  
Ma knows Cleo is wrong, she wants to hit her with something and tell her she is an idiot, but she doesn’t, instead, she attempts to make a joke. “Well since that’s the case, can I have Newt?” she says with a smirk. “I mean, if you get to make out with someone, it seems only fair.” Cleo side eyes her, but with a smile. “I am kidding.”  
“I know,” Cleo laughs, “you only have eyes for Thomas.”  
“Hey, no we aren’t discussing my love life here,” Ma says. “We are questioning your capability.”  
“So, you don’t deny it?” Cleo says.  
“And you just finally admitted to having romantic feelings for Newt.”  
“Touché.”  
“I just, I don’t understand how this happened,” Ma says. “Gally.”  
“You can’t tell anyone” Cleo says quickly. Ma looks back at her.   
“You can’t just drop that on me,” Ma says, “what about Newt?”  
“You definitely can’t tell Newt,” Cleo says.   
“That is not fair,” Ma says.   
“I’m sorry, I just, things are so complicated,” Cleo says.   
“I’ve noticed.”  
“And I want to make things right with Newt, and I don’t stand a chance if he thinks I went straight to Gally because we were friendly,” Cleo says.  
“Isn’t that exactly what happened?” Ma asks.  
“It isn’t like that, Gally is different to how I felt about Newt, feel about Newt,” Cleo sighs. “It’s complicated.” Since Ma arrived, she knew Cleo had feelings for Newt, it was obvious to Ma, and it was also obvious that Cleo only had eyes for Newt, it was like she couldn’t see anything else. Ma understood that, how couldn’t she have feelings for Newt? Ma also understood why Cleo was so fast to listen to the rules to bury her feelings, it was one the reasons Ma buried her own. Ma saw exactly what Cleo saw in Newt, he was sweet and caring and intelligent and undeniably attractive, but he was also Cleo’s and Ma would never want to step on her toes. Cleo was her best friend, Cleo was family, her home. Cleo made this life something worth trying to make better. No matter what she felt, Cleo came first, besides Newt clearly felt the same even if Cleo was oblivious to it. The way his eyes lit up around her, the way he would watch her across the fire, Cleo might not have ever seen it, but Ma did, every day. But Ma kind of felt it was best to not think about it at all, Cleo was Cleo and she adored her and she didn’t hold it against her, but it wouldn’t be any other way with Newt. They were something long before Ma arrived and Ma couldn’t ever be mad at either of them for that. And then there was the others, who for moments, glimpses in time, she thought, maybe, even Minho once or twice, but Ma decided to bury those suspicions, those feelings too. She couldn’t tell them how much she noticed. She daren’t think too long about the way she would cling to the fabric of Newt’s hoodie as he held her, the way Cleo’s smile at her was sometimes more than just a smile. It was for the best, the rules made sense. She was good at ignore her feelings for the better of everyone, even when Cleo herself would smile at her sometimes, and tell her she was the only one she had eyes for, she knew she was joking… mostly. But it was easier for Ma to just pretend she couldn’t feel that way, she decided that like Cleo, giving up on any idea of love for herself was the best plan of action, even if she wouldn’t let Cleo entirely do the same. She saw Cleo and Newt and how well they were together, how much they cared, and they hurt each other and they were complicated and messy, but it had always been them. They had a lot to work out, but Ma believed they would. So, Ma, buried all her feelings and focused on Cleo, on the one relationship she knew wouldn’t bite her, even if sometimes that meant the both of them forgot where the lines were, on occasion. Ma didn’t keep secrets from Cleo, except maybe this one, this one, big… wonderful… painful… deep feeling. This longing, this desire to be loved in the way she loved. Ma couldn’t tell Cleo about how she felt about Newt back then, even sometimes now, because she knew Cleo, her stubbornness, her love for her. She knew she would step away without a second thought, and she would tell Ma to be happy, she would fight Alby, she would fight anyone for Ma’s happiness. And it wouldn’t do any good, because even if Ma had those feelings, Cleo did too, and Newt… no matter how he saw Ma, Ma could be the world to him, but Cleo, Cleo was the stars. And she knew, in moments of quiet, of serenity, in moments of panic, like in The Maze, Cleo could love Ma, but she also knew that Cleo was so wrapped up in her love for Newt that it wouldn’t be fair to ask her too. So, she said nothing, and she was grateful for what she had. But then Thomas arrived, and she forgot how to control her feelings so easily, she forgot how to bury them, and they kept forcing themselves to the surface.   
“I just you were so adamant on the rules, and I get it, they are there for a reason, but breaking the rules, for Gally-,” Ma is cut off by the sound of commotion and a familiar scraping sound. “Is that?”  
“The box?” Cleo responds. “It’s early…”  
Cleo and Ma meet the others who are surrounding the box as it raises. Newt is to Cleo’s left side and she looks at him, they share a look for a moment as Gally starts to open the box up. “I’m sorry,” Newt whispers. Cleo reaches out and gently squeezes his hand, he looks surprised as she smiles at him. Ma watches them closely.   
“I know,” she says. She nods to Gally opening the box. “We can talk later, right now, I think you are needed.” Newt jumps into the box and his words echo through The Glade.   
“It’s a girl,” he says. Ma and Cleo exchange a look before leaning forward to try to see better.   
“She looks dead,” Gally says.  
“She is still breathing,” Newt says, mumbling idiot under his breath.  
“What is in her hand?” Ma asks. Newt pulls a piece of paper.   
“She is the last one,” Newt says. “Ever.”  
“Well get her out of there,” Cleo says. The girl opens her eyes, short on breath and panicked. She looks around at the crowd of people staring at her.   
“Marie?” she asks. “Thomas?” she manages before passing out again.   
“You know her?” Gally asks Ma. Ma just shakes her head.   
“Not that I can remember” she says.   
“I have no idea who she is,” Thomas agrees.  
“Get her out the goddamn box already,” Cleo says. 

Soon within gaining consciousness the last greenie is already causing havoc, having taken the high ground upon one of the stands, she proceeds to throw things at anyone who comes near. Ma stands out of range, looking concerned. Cleo stands next to her, slightly amused by the sheltering boys. “Even I didn’t cause this much trouble,” Cleo laughs. “And you were practically angelic.”  
“I did run,” Ma points out.   
“You woke up surrounded by strangers, all boys at that, I don’t blame you,” Cleo says.   
“But I had you,” Ma points out. “You walked up to me and asked if I was scared.”  
“You were,” Cleo says, “I believe it was rhetorical.”  
“Yeah, but you told me I was safe with you,” Ma says, “and I believed you.”  
“Well, I am very convincing when I want to be,” Cleo points out. Ma looks up at the girl again.  
“Maybe she would believe you too?” she tries. Cleo rolls her eyes and takes Ma’s hand.  
“Guess we ought to try.”  
They make it to the ladder and the girl leans over the edge and stares at them. “Hey, we are going to come up, okay?” Cleo asks. She looks at the two of them for a moment and then slips back out of view. Ma looks at Cleo but Cleo shrugs. “That wasn’t a no.”  
“I guess not,” Ma says and they climb up to her. She sits at the far edge of the platform, holding out a blade.   
“We aren’t a threat to you,” Cleo says. She looks suspicious. “Do you know your name?”  
“Teresa” she says quickly. Ma looks puzzled.   
“That mut be record time,” Ma says.   
“I’m not sure, I was pretty quick,” Cleo says.   
“Not a competition,” Ma reminds her.   
“Sure, but if it was, I would win,” Cleo says. Ma nudges her slightly as Teresa stares at them both. “Okay, I am Cleo, this is Ma, you are in The Glade. I know it is scary, waking up not remembering anything, but you are safe, we promise.” She says nothing. “We have all been where you are, but you didn’t look so good when you got up here, are you okay?” When she doesn’t respond Ma tries to move closer and Teresa points the blade at them both.  
“Are you okay?” Ma asks.   
“Can you at least let Ma take a look at you? She fixes people up, it her job around here,” Cleo says. Teresa assesses them both with a look before nodding and letting Ma move closer to examine her.   
“And you?” she asks. “What is your job around here?”  
“I sing,” Cleo laughs, “mostly.”  
“You sing?” she asks. Cleo glances at Ma.   
“Oh, you hear a lot of stories about the sailors and their sport,” Cleo sings.   
“How every sailor has a girl in every port,” Ma chimes in.  
“But if you added two and two, you’d figure out right quick-,”  
“It’s just because the girls have a lad on every ship,” she finishes. Cleo and Ma exchange a look.   
“How did you know that?” Cleo asks. Something about Teresa sets off Cleo’s fight or flight, but she can’t figure out why. Maybe she just isn’t used to girls turning up in The Glade. Ma felt like godsent, Teresa feels like a warning.   
“I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t know much.”  
“You knew Thomas, you knew Ma,” Cleo says.  
“I don’t know how or why, I just, did, I only knew their names, their faces, I don’t know why,” Teresa says.  
“That’s okay,” Ma says. “That’s more than most people remember.”  
“I also have these,” Teresa says pulling long thin vials from her pocket filled with blue liquid. Cleo stares at the large vials, and feels for the chain around her neck.   
“What are those?” Ma asks.   
“I don’t know, but they just say W C K D,” she reads.   
“Wicked,” Cleo says. “Means nothing to me.” That’s a lie, a straight up, blatant lie, and it goes against everything Cleo has tried to do to say it, but she does.  
“Wicked,” Teresa responds. “Get the boy.”  
Cleo and Ma lean over the watch and sure as day most the boys are still hovering and Thomas is one of them. “Thomas, come up,” Cleo says. Newt and Thomas exchange a look but Thomas just shrugs and does as he is instructed.   
Teresa, Ma and Thomas talk, for what could easily be an hour and Cleo tries to pay attention, she tries, and tries but the weight of the chain around her neck feels heavy somehow, heavier than it has been for such a long time. Her eyes keep darting to the woods, to the spot she buried it, and then back to the vials in Teresa’s hand. Ma watches her, and mistakes her glances as ones towards the tents.   
“Alby,” Ma says, taking a vial from Teresa’s hand. “Cleo you are a genius.”  
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Cleo says. Ma starts to scramble down and rush to the tent.  
“Where are you going?” Thomas asks.   
“I think this is our only chance at saving Alby.”


	13. Chapter 13

Alby has been delirious for days, and there is not logical explanation for why the sting hasn’t overtaken him. But Ma pleading the case that this random blue vial of liquid is our best and only chance to not throw him to The Maze, is compelling, even to the most doubtful of us. So, Thomas hold’s Alby still and Newt, who understands that Alby is the person in this life that Cleo has known longest, even if they weren’t always close, or didn’t have the same kind of relationships she had with others, she had known him all the life she knew, and she should barely look, and Newt knowing this, held Cleo. Gally from the corner observes it all, overwatching, watching Thomas and Ma in a desperate attempt to save a friend, and watching Cleo, not knowing what to do or say that could make any of it, any better.

Alby starts yelling, screaming at Thomas, accusations and pleads, but they are almost unintelligible. Cleo looks frozen, deer in the headlights, rabbit looking down the barrel of the gun, frozen. “Cleo,” Ma says. Cleo doesn’t respond. Ma checks as Alby falls back into unconsciousness. “Cleo.”

“I am here,” Cleo responds. But Ma sees that she isn’t, not really.

“Cleo, get some air,” Ma says, “doctors’ orders.” Cleo slips out of Newt’s grip and exits the tent. Gally looks like he might follow her. “Gally,” Ma calls out, looking him up and down. She tries to keep her mind on Alby, on the test at hand. But she can’t help looking at him, like he could break everything into pieces with even a word. “Come here, I need your help with Alby.”

Cleo doesn’t stop walking, not until she reaches the woods, she feels herself resisting but she ends up in the same spot. The green has grown since she was last here, trees have grown new branches, the flowers have grown and died and grown again, but the rock still sits on the ground by the oak tree, unmoved, untouched. It feels like a gravestone the longer the looks at it. She slowly approaches, a deep feeling of dread. The memories are like a dream, like a horrible, twisted dream that makes her feel sick, but she drops to the ground and starts to dig. Against her best interest, against her sense of logic, she digs until she can see the shining silver in the dirt, the small silver capsule with the glass vial in it. The glass vial filled with the same blue liquid that Ma just used on Alby. She picks it up and cleans the dirt away, and in turning it over the metal shows her what she remembered. W.C.K.D carved into the capsule. With shaky hands she puts the capsule back on her necklace chain and she just sits there, in the dirt.

Ma tends to Alby, letting Newt and Gally leave after Cleo has been gone an adequate amount of time. She sits next to Alby, checking his wound. “Wasn’t the infection much worse?” Thomas asks.

“It definitely was, it is like, he is getting better,” Ma says cleaning the wound.

“I thought people don’t get better from stings?” Thomas asks.

“No one ever has, but that was kind of the hope with the vial,” Ma says.

“Is it some kind of cure?” Thomas asks.

“Maybe,” Ma whispers. Thomas meets her eye, and it is like he can sense a sadness, he doesn’t know why, but he knows Ma is trying to hide it. Ma looks away, she has so much on her mind without Thomas coming into it right now. Thomas reaches and takes her hand and she doesn’t pull back. “Thomas,” Ma starts, she is prepared to tell him there are rules that means he probably shouldn’t reach for her the way he does, look at her the way he does. But she knows the hypocrisy in that, and she also doesn’t want him to stop. Teresa hovers, slowly entering. Thomas lets go of Ma’s hand and Ma adjusts herself to look at Teresa.

“Did it help?” she asks. Ma looks her up and down, she knew her name and Ma can’t begin to imagine why. She turns up and turns the whole system upside down, but it isn’t her fault, she is just the last. There had to be a last eventually. Cleo seems suspicious of her and Ma doesn’t blame her, but still.

“He seems to be doing better,” Ma says. Teresa smiles a little.

“That’s good,” she says.

“You came down,” Thomas says.

“One of the boys said I would find you here,” Teresa says.

Newt finds Cleo before anyone else. He walks up behind her and taps her shoulder. “You okay love?” he asks before realising what he said. “Sorry.”

“No,” Cleo says, “it’s fine,” she looks guilty, she feels guilt, “I shouldn’t have said what I said Newt, I know you don’t mean it like that and I was just angry.”

“Mean it like what?” Newt asks, perplexed. A quick flood of panic rushes through Cleo, she can’t exactly explain why him calling her love knots her up so bad without either suggesting she thought he had feelings for her or admitting she has feelings for him. So instead, she quickly redirects the conversation.

“Is Alby looking better?” she asks.

“Yeah, whatever that stuff was, it worked, he looks almost…” Newt searches for the word.

“Cured?” Cleo suggests.

“If there is such a thing,” Newt says. Cleo smiles and Newt feels better. “I should have apologized.”

“It’s okay Newt, you have,” Cleo says, “and that is a step in the right direction.”

“I was stupid and I was arrogant, I forgot my actions have impact on people other than me, and I never wanted to hurt you, Cleo, that is… something I never wanted to do,” he says.

“I know Newt, I was just angry, and I shouldn’t have held onto it for so long, but the idea of you being gone, it was just, too much,” Cleo says.

“I promise not to put you through that again,” he says. Cleo laughs.

“I bloody hope so,” she says. “Don’t go dying on me.”

“I will try my best.”

Cleo is helping hand out the food, Ma laughing at Thomas dropping firewood as Teresa sits a little further away, watching everyone, so confused about the world she has just been thrown into. Newt takes some food from Cleo’s hands and his fingers gently brush across her own and she meets his eyes for a moment, a long, lingering moment. Before he takes a seat. Once everyone has eaten and the sky starts to turn dark and the fire is starting to light, Ma turns around to see that Cleo is nowhere to be seen. She checks the rest of the campfire and notices Gally’s absence also. The feeling that raises in Ma’s chest isn’t jealousy, it runs deeper than that, Newt and Cleo are her favourite people, and she was okay with stepping aside for them to be together because all she wanted was for the both of them to be happy. She always felt like Cleo’s heart belonged to Newt in a way no one could touch, and she was okay with that, knowing that Cleo loved her as much as she could love her. But with Gally, there was a strange disconnect, like somewhere they had all missed a step.

“What was that earlier?” Gally asks. Cleo laughs, leaning against a tree.

“What was what?” She asks.

“In the med-tent,” he says.

“Oh,” Cleo says, immediately embarrassed at her own weakness.

“And again, at dinner,” he says. The embarrassment fades as she realizes he isn’t talking about her nearly crying at the sight of Alby.

“Do you mean Newt?” Cleo asks.

“What else would I mean?” he asks.

“What the hell do you mean?” she asks.

“What was that?” he asks. Cleo looks at him, he must have watched her so intently. Seen the way Newt held her when she panicked, the gently interaction at dinner, the looks. No one ever noticed, except for Ma, no one cares enough to pay that kind of attention to whatever they are doing.

“Wait,” Cleo looks almost perplexed. “Are you jealous.”

“I wouldn’t say jealous,” he says. He is jealous, but he is acting more collected about it than Cleo has seen Gally act about anything in his life.

“I’m not yours Gally,” Cleo reminds him. “You don’t get to act jealous.”

“No, you aren’t mine, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to even for a second believe anyone could own you Cleo” Gally says, “but I am the only person that you meet out here, aren’t I? The only person that makes the noise go away,” he places his hand on her arm and tilts her head up to meet his eyes, he is softer suddenly, gentle, so un-Gally-like in all ways. “The only person that distracts you from it all.”

“Yeah,” Cleo says, “but Gally you know-,”

“You don’t have feelings for me, I know,” he says, but his expression doesn’t change. “And I think I know why.”

“Oh?” Cleo asks. “Because being here with you puts me in control of those kind of feelings, and this helps me keep myself in check so I don’t form those kinds of romantic emotions and therefore lose control over myself?”

“No,” he says plainly, “it is because you have feelings for someone else.”

“I-,”

“Don’t try to deny it, there is no point, I have seen the way you look at him, I am not an idiot,” he says.

“Could have fooled me,” she laughs.

“And you may have feelings for him, and that’s okay, because you fell for him first, and I don’t deserve you, I know that. But I will be better, and I will deserve you, and then, it won’t matter that you developed feelings for him first, because I will be last.” Cleo thinks he is joking, Cleo doesn’t put any weight into his words, because she honestly believes him to be kidding. So she returns his comment in similar tone.

“You are wrong,” she smiles “I don’t think I am built to love people Gally.”

“Just wait.”

“Just kiss me.”

Ma and Cleo sing and Teresa watches them, sat between Thomas and Winston. Still so confused about The Glade, about everyone, about everything. Nothing here makes sense to her. Cleo isn’t sure why but she can sense a sadness in Ma, so she picks her next song carefully. She steps up and slowly starts to move around the fire, Ma watches her and is distracted from her thoughts again. Everyone has eyes on Cleo, but she is solely focused on Ma. She skips around the fire and on her second turn she grabs her hand and much to Ma’s protest, she makes Ma dance around the fire with her. Cleo pulls her in and spins her around and Ma laughs as Cleo sings and everyone watches and she can’t help but remember the night in The Glade. How complicated it all felt, yet how a simple look at Cleo made everything clear, her choices, her path, they laid themselves out for her that night, that first night. But this was different, here and now Ma didn’t feel second best to Newt in Cleo’s eyes, she didn’t feel she was competing for her love and attention, she didn’t feel she owed anyone anything. She forgot the way Gally was making her feel pushed even further aside, she forgot all the reasons she had refused to let herself make choices to be happy and she just danced with the girl who made her want to smile.

Thomas caught her eye and she nods at him and he smiles and Cleo offers out a hand to drag him up and dance with them, and before the girls can force the reluctant Thomas to join in, they all hear it. The sound of The Maze, the sound they hear every day but never like this, never now.

The sound of the doors opening. The sound of the doors opening, at night.


	14. Ma's First Night

_I remember that night I just might  
I remember that night I just might   
I remember that night, I remember that–_

_I remember that night, I just might regret that night for the rest of my days…_

Cleo guides Ma to the first, hand in hand. Some of the boys who have been wrestling at the far edges of the fire, look over at them both. They are trying to show off for the new girl, for Cleo. Cleo rolls her eyes. “Ignore them,” she says.

_I remember those soldier boys tripping over themselves to win our praise_

Cleo looks around for a moment before settling on a place by the fire to sit. “I’ll be back in a moment, okay, I am going to get us something to drink,” Cleo says. Ma looks concerned. “I’ll be right back, besides they’re harmless.” She walks into the dark and Ma watches her go.

_I remember that dreamlike firelight like a dream that you can't quite place_

Ma watches the fire, as it flickers and moves with the low soft wind of The Glade. Someone sits down beside her and she turns to look at them.

_But Newt, I'll never forget the first time I saw your face…_

The boy, with soft, kind eyes, messy hair and a welcoming smile, turns to her.

_I have never been the same. Intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame_.

“Hi,” he says. Ma nearly forgets how to breathe, everything about The Glade seems so harsh, so dark, so endless and painful, except for Cleo who seemed to resist it all, and except this boy, who sits down next to her with ease and smile.

_And when you said "Hi", I forgot my dang name. Set my heart aflame, every part aflame. This is not a game…_

“You strike me as a girl who has never been at the fireside before,” he says.

“I’m can tell you that is factual,” Ma says. He looks at her and nods.

“Oh,” he says. Ma feels worried all of a sudden, the boy takes a sip from the jar of questionable liquid.

“Oh?” she asks.

“You are like me,” he says.

“Like you?” she asks. “Is that right?”

Newt talks for a while, about The Glade, about himself and the experience of arriving here, of realising the world around you, realising in what you’ve ended up. He talks about the way he observes the others, the way he notices what most don’t, he calls her attention to her own observations, her own noticing, she can’t help but smile. He seems so familiar. So, like her. He understands it, in a way she didn’t know she could be understood.  
“My name is Marie,” she says.   
“Newt,” he replies.

“Do you remember anything Newt, from before?”   
“I guess it’s all unimportant,” he says, “besides, there's a million things I haven't done. Just you wait.”

_So, this is what it feels like to match wits with someone at your level. What the hell is the catch?_

He talks and she listens and she talks in return and it isn’t like she has been in The Glade a day, it is like she has always been here, at this fireside, with him.

_The conversation lasted two minutes. Maybe three minutes, everything we said in total agreement._

“You like to dance Marie?” he asks. Ma laughs, thinking he is joking.

_It's a dream and it's a bit of a dance_

“I don’t know,” she says. “How would anyone even…”

_A bit of a posture, it's a bit of a stance_

“When the singing starts,” he says. Everything he does seemed so effortless in that moment, talking to Ma like they were strangers, she felt calm, she felt seen.

_He's a bit of a flirt, but I'ma give it a chance_

He smiles again, and the light reflecting in his eyes and Ma can’t help but smile back. It was obvious, instantly.

_Handsome, boy, does he know it._

How this, handsome, funny, charming boy, with big brown eyes and the softest smile.

_Peach fuzz, and he can't even grow it_

How it could be so easy to fall in love with him. Ma instantly wanted to protect him, to get him out of this nightmare, to take him somewhere safe.

_I want to take him far away from this place._

There are footsteps behind them and Newt looks up and his expression changes, his eyes, there is a brighter light behind them, like he is seeing the sun for the first time. Ma turns to see what he is looking at and she sees Cleo walking back through the darkness with jar in hand.

_Then I turn and see my Cleo’s face and she is..._

Cleo’s eyes meet Ma’s and she smiles but they soon meetup with Newt’s and everything falls into place, the smile on her lips meets from end to end, the flicker of something in her eyes, the way she looks back at him…

_Helpless… And I know she is…Helpless…And her eyes are just…Helpless_

Ma sees it, without hesitation or uncertainty. Newt and Cleo in the light of the fire, as clear as day. “Newt,” Cleo says with a chuckle. “You found my girl.”

_And I realize three fundamental truths at the exact same time…_

“You better not be moving in on my girl there,” Cleo jokes, sitting on the other side of Ma to Newt. Newt laughs.

“Even if not for the rules, do you think I would dare cross you Cleo?” he asks. He is a little drunk, and that is clearer now, but Ma sees everything with complete clarity.

_Number one: I'm a girl in a world in which my only job is to look after The Gladers._

“Newt is one of the best Gladers,” Cleo says. “He is the right mix of smart and resourceful.”

_And Newt is Cleo’s…_

“She is too nice to me,” Newt laughs.

_That doesn't mean I want him any less…_

“I did down a jar of this already,” Cleo says holding up the jar. She passes it to Ma. “I am warning you; it is gross.”

_Number two: I’m the second girl in a world full of boys, I’d be naive to put that aside…_

“I heard Alby made you second the other day,” Cleo says to Newt, “thank you for all your service.”

“Oh Cleo, if it takes The Glade for us to meet, it will have been worth it,” Newt laughs.

_Number three: I know Cleo better than I know my own mind…_

Ma takes a sip of the drink, watching them both, and she quickly coughs and spits it out. Cleo pats her back and grabs the drink quickly. “I warned you.”

_You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind…_

“That is disgusting,” Ma says. Cleo and Newt nod in agreement.

“Yeah, it is,” Cleo passes it to Newt, “go throw that on the fire, or at Gally, I don’t care.” Newt takes the drink and moves away from the girls, Cleo looks back at Ma. “So, you’ve met Newt.”

_If I tell her that I love him she'd be silently resigned, he'd be mine…_

“How do you find him?” she asks, smiling as she watches him walk away.

_She would say, "I'm fine"_

“He seems nice,” Ma says, “you two are close, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Cleo says, she looks away, a little sadly for a moment and Ma wonder’s if she said something wrong. “We are good friends.”

_She'd be lying._

In that moment Ma makes a choice, a choice that in this life, this Glade and Maze and world of boys, she chooses Cleo, before all else, before feelings and boys, she chooses Cleo.

_But when I fantasize at night it's Newt’s eyes…_

But as she looks across the fire at Newt, the feeling doesn’t go away, and she just stops looking.

_As I romanticize what might have been…_


	15. Chapter 14

Cleo grabs Ma so fast, instinctively pulling her behind her. Ma is frozen, staring at the doors of The Maze, even at this distance all The Gladers can see them start to open. Gally is so fast to their side that the fact no one notices is beyond Ma’s understanding. “Everyone needs to get somewhere safe, now,” Newt says, turning to look for Ma and Cleo.   
Teresa looks even more confused. “What’s happening?” she asks.   
“The Maze isn’t supposed to open,” Thomas says. “The Maze closes at night to keep the grievers out.”  
“The what?” Teresa asks. A griever, big and a horrific mix of organic and robotic material starts to run down the stretch of Maze towards The Glade.   
“One of those” Thomas says.   
“Ma,” Cleo says, making her look her in the eyes. “Ma, you take Teresa, and you go to the watchtower, you are high up there, and you are safe.” Ma is paralyzed with fear, but she notices something in what Cleo says that makes her drag herself back into herself.   
“Aren’t you coming?” she asks. The look of fear in her eyes, it breaks Cleo’s heart.   
“I need to get the bow, and then I will meet you there,” Cleo holds Ma close. “I promise.”  
“Please don’t leave me,” Ma says.   
“Newt will go with you,” Cleo says. She looks at Newt who goes to protest but knows he can’t.   
“I want you to come as well,” she says.   
“I can’t protect you without it,” Cleo says. “Ma, we don’t have long, get Teresa, and go.”  
“I’ll get it,” Gally says, blade in hand, the others have already started to scramble to anywhere that feels secure, high ground, low ground, shelter. “Go with her. Stay safe.”  
“What about Alby?” Ma asks.   
“He is just as safe as any of us in the tent,” Cleo says. Cleo takes Ma’s hand to get her to move towards the watch tower. Her eyes meet Gally’s and he nods at her, a reassurance, but she doesn’t feel reassured. The sounds of the griever making it into The Glade, and she can feel her heart in her throat. “Be safe,” she says. He smiles.   
“Careful, you almost sound like you care,” he mouths and runs. Cleo turns to Newt who has been trying to get Teresa to move.   
“Come on,” Cleo says. Newt takes stride with Ma but Teresa starts running in the opposite direction. Thomas looks at Cleo and at where Ma is headed, “go,” she tells him. “Teresa!” Cleo calls.   
“No, I don’t agree with your plan,” Teresa says.   
“You don’t know this place like I do,” Cleo says. Minho rushes over to the two of them.  
“You said this doesn’t happen, you don’t know this situation,” she says.   
“Cleo, where is Ma?” Minho asks.  
“Shucking- I am trying to help you! Come with me!” Cleo says to Teresa. She glances at Minho. “Safe, she is safe, I sent her to the tower, but Teresa is just-,”  
“You don’t control me Cleo,” she hangs on her name, like he had more to say, like her name was supposed to be more than it is. Longer perhaps. And she senses it in her voice.   
“What do you know Teresa?” she asks, grabbing her arm. Before Teresa can answer there is a scream from some of The Gladers as the griever starts to rampage.   
“Cleo go,” Minho says, eyes on the griever.   
“But,” Cleo starts.  
“Go, keep Ma safe, I will watch her,” Minho says.   
“Minho,” Cleo places a hand on his arm but he basically pushes her towards the tower.  
“Go, find Ma, be safe,” Minho says. Cleo wants to protest but she knows she can’t. Cleo spots Chuck and she looks at Teresa one more time, she looks stubborn and unchanging. So, Cleo runs, she grabs Chuck’s hand and she keeps running, until they reach the watch tower. She insists he climbs up first and she follows. Ma is sat between Newt and Thomas, eyes closed, hands over ears, shaking. Thomas has one arm around her Newt is trying to talk to her, but she is inconsolable. “Move,” Cleo tells them both, and takes Ma’s hands in her own. “Focus on me,” she whispers. “What did I tell you when you first got here?” Ma meets her eye. “Say it back to me.”  
“I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you,” Ma whispers.   
“Nothing has changed,” Cleo says.   
“You can’t protect me from The Maze Cleo, you can’t protect me from death,” Ma whispers.   
“I’d die before I let you die before me,” Cleo says. “I’d die if you die before me, Ma, I promise you that.”  
“Don’t you dare,” she says. Ma looks at Cleo, and her eyes are just on her. She isn’t looking at Newt or anyone else, she is just looking at her. She knows she is the only one panicking in the same way, but the world is falling apart, and Cleo can do nothing except look at Ma. 

Cleo plays with Ma’s hair and she falls asleep in her lap. They haven’t moved for hours. The sounds outside are silenced. None of them dare look outside to see. Cleo’s mind wonders, as she looks around. Chuck is also asleep, curled up under Cleo’s blanket, passed out from the stress. “You wanted to be out there,” Thomas says. “Didn’t you?”  
“You say it like I look for danger,” Cleo says.   
“I think you do,” Newt says.   
“I want to protect people,” Cleo says.  
“But you are here?” Thomas says.  
“I know,” Cleo looks at Ma asleep. “I had to protect Ma first, and for once I had to do that right, and the right way wasn’t rushing into danger, it wasn’t running head first into The Maze without thinking, it wasn’t putting myself between her and the danger. For once it was taking her somewhere safe, and staying there with her. And is the hardest thing I have ever done.”  
“But it’s for Ma, so of course you do it,” Newt says.   
“What does that mean?” Thomas asks. Newt sighs. Ma stirs but the others don’t notice.   
“See, I have come to realise that Cleo would let the world burn to save Ma,” Newt says. “If I had asked her to stay safe, she would have picked up that bow and told me that she has never been safe a day in her life.”  
“But for Ma she stayed safe,” Thomas says.   
“Isn’t she the reason we are all here?” Cleo points out. Newt looks at Cleo but says nothing. “Except for Chuck, he just needed to be safe.”  
“Safe,” Thomas laughs. “Is that a real thing?”  
“I honestly don’t know.”  
“Gally never came by with your bow,” Thomas says.   
“Gally went to get her bow?” Newt asks, having entirely missed that.   
“I am trying not to think about it Thomas,” Cleo says, “like I am trying not to think about the fact Alby is defenceless in that tent, and everyone else out there, could be okay or not, and I am trying not to think about it, because it makes me want to run. It makes me want to fight, and I can’t do that.”  
“You should try to sleep,” Newt says. Cleo scoffs.  
“Like that will happen.”  
“What happened with Teresa?” Thomas asks.   
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Cleo says, leaning into Newt slightly. He shifts so to accommodate her. “But I don’t trust her, not one bit.”  
They both hear it, Cleo and Thomas in that moment. The yelling as it starts again, and one thing sticks out amongst the rest of the voices. “Is that Minho?”  
Thomas is up and out the watch tower without a moment’s hesitation. Ma in her half-asleep state reaches and grabs the fabric off his top, but he slips away and Ma is left sitting up and watching the place he once occupied. Ma turns and see’s Cleo is still holding her, still there. “You are still here,” she whispers.   
“Every ounce of my being Ma is telling me to fight,” Cleo says. “So, I’m choosing to fight to be here, with you.” Cleo looks at Newt who is watching them both. It is like she can hear the words he isn’t saying.   
Thomas moves through the chaos, some of the structures have been destroyed in the rampage, and there are the remains of a griever slumped not too far from the entrance. But Thomas isn’t paying attention to the rest of The Glade, he is watching the other griever, and the Gladers that have decided the best plan of action is to fight it. Thomas rushes forward, grabbing the closest thing he can find to weaponize and before he reaches Minho and the others someone grabs him my bother shoulders and tackles him to the ground. Thomas knocks his head hard onto the floor, and he sees a flash, like a memory, like a moment in time. Alby grabs his collar, he looks healthy but his eyes, he looks like he has looked directing into the void and barely made it back. “You did this,” Alby says shaking Thomas. “I remember everything-,” he doesn’t get to finish before he is impaled. The griever is leaning over Thomas as Alby’s body slumps down. The griever looks down at him and an arrow hits it in, grabbing its attention for long enough for Thomas to scramble to his feet. Thomas looks and sees Minho, carrying another Glader, while guiding Teresa through the dark as the stares at the Maze’s biggest killer. The biggest threat any of the Glader’s face. And it is destroying as it moves. Gally looks to Thomas.   
“What the- why are you here?” Gally demands. “Where is Cleo?”  
“In the watch tower,” Thomas says scrambling for breath.   
“What did Alby say to you?” Gally asks, like he hadn’t heard, like he wasn’t just waiting for a reason to blame Thomas for the destruction, the death.   
“He said he remembered, everything,” Thomas says. The griever is hit with another arrow and it starts to sway. Thomas lets the realisation poor over him and he steps into the path of the griever.   
“What are you doing?” Gally demands.  
“I’m going to remember,” Thomas says as the griever stings him. He falls to the ground and Gally drags him back, memories swarm back in flashes.   
“I should just leave you there, but she’d never forgive me,” Gally says. Minho appears back in sight and leaves Teresa at Thomas and Gally’s side before taking a step back. He takes off one of his wrist wraps and with the embers of the fire he lights it. “What the-,” Gally doesn’t get to finish before Minho throws a jar at the griever and the embers set the beast ablaze. The beast falls down and they are stood there, Teresa looking down at Thomas. Gally looks at Teresa, reluctant to ask. “Do you have another vial?”


	16. Chapter 15

Cleo holds Ma. The sun is pulling up over The Maze and The Glade almost in complete ruin. The bodies of two grievers and countless of their friends just lay in every sightline. Minho approaches them both slowly, as Newt and Chuck go to meet up with the remaining Gladers. Minho can just see it on Ma’s face and he doesn’t hold back, he pulls her in with both arms, wrapping her tightly in his embrace.

_-Flashback-_

_“Wow there,” Minho says catching Ma as she trips over him. “Careful.”_

_“Sorry,” Ma says a little flustered. “My mind was elsewhere.” She looks up at him and he smiles down at her. “You are Minho, right?”_

_“Marie,” he says in return._

_“You’re a runner,” Ma says. He shakes himself off and crosses his arms in an attempt to make himself seem cooler._

_“That I am,” he says._

_“I wish I was that brave,” she says._

_“You think I am brave?” Minho asks, looking into her eyes. She blushes a little and looks away._

_“Don’t tell him that,” Cleo says coming up behind them, “it will go to his head.”_

Minho cared about Marie from the offset, the way she cared about others, the way she even in her fear and her confusion, felt the need to help. She loses herself in his hug and he looks down at her, knowing what pain she must be in, and hating to know he is only about to add to it. “Look, we kind of need you both, in the med-tent,” Minho says holding on to Ma a moment longer than he should, scared to let her go.

“Something happen to Alby?” Ma asks. Minho can’t look at her.

“Yeah, not in the med-tent though,” Minho says. “It’s Thomas, I’ll explain on the way.”

Thomas is unconscious. Ma and Cleo left in the tent alone with him. No one else obtained injuries and survived. Cleo passed Gally on the way, and he was holding tight to her bow and arrow, like he was keeping it safe for her, and she couldn’t help but wonder, if perhaps it was the other way around.

“Alby,” Ma tries to get the words out. “He was cured, we cured him,” she starts.

“But the grievers don’t just sting you,” Cleo says holding her hand.

“Why, why would he do this to himself?” Ma asks, looking at Thomas as he tosses and turns, muttering.

“Minho says he wanted to remember,” Cleo says. Ma traces the bruise where Gally had stabbed the blue vial of liquid into Thomas’s arm, she knows she cannot blame him for not knowing how to handle that situation, but she can’t help but think she should have been there.

Thomas tosses and turns, memories coming back to him in waves.

_-Flashback-_

_Thomas looks at a blonde woman, learning over some files at the long metal table in the lab. “This is Marie,” she says without looking up, but gesturing with her hand to the doorway._

_“You must be Thomas,” Marie says with a smile offering her hand._

_“She’s young,” another whitecoat says._

_“Aren’t most of us,” Teresa points out from her place at the side of the room._

_“She may be young but she is the best we have,” the woman tells them._

“He will be okay,” Cleo says. “Gally administrated the cure so fast.”

_-Flashback-_

_Thomas and Marie are watching Cleo as she tries to teach some of the younger subjects’ songs. “She doesn’t know, does she?” Marie asks. “About what Ava has planned for them?”_

_“No,” Thomas says. “Cleopatra cares so much, she has connections to them. Especially that one,” Thomas gestures to Cleo talking to Newt. “Ava thinks it is best to keep her out of it.”_

_“Why is she here at all?” Marie asks._

_“Cleo is W.C.K.D family, her only remaining relatives are here, where else would so go, like all the subjects, she has nothing outside of this place.”_

“I can’t tell if I am mad at him, or mad at myself,” Ma says.

_-Flashback-_

_Marie laughs talking to Cleo, and for a moment Thomas just watches them intently. But as one of the whitecoats comes and selects a subject Cleo watches them go. “Where are you taking him?” Cleo asks. They don’t respond. Marie watches Cleo, the concern on her face. “They took another one, last month, and I haven’t seen them since.”_

_“I am sure everything is okay,” Marie tries._

_“I don’t believe it is.”_

“Be mad at him, definitely at him, I am mad at him,” Cleo insists.

_-Flashback-_

_“You need to justify it, even some of the other researchers are impatient, unsettled, they think you are acting without conscience, they think you are being short sighted,” Thomas is listening to Teresa and Ava speak, eavesdropping. “You have to prove to them our work here is justified. We have to prove it isn’t selfish.”_

_“How do you suggest we do that Teresa” Ava asks._

_“Cleopatra,” Teresa says. “Put Cleopatra in The Maze.”_

“I am not brave like you,” Ma says. “But if I was I could have been there, I could have helped.”

_-Flashback-_

_“You are kidding me, you don’t know her status, she isn’t a subject,” Marie says, she looks so angry, Thomas has never seen her so angry._

_“I can do exactly what I choose,” Ava says. “Cleopatra goes into The Maze.”_

_“Mary will not allow this,” Marie says._

_“Mary doesn’t have a say in the matter.”_

_“Thomas, surely you can’t be okay with this?” Marie asks._

_“Thomas knows the work we are doing here is important, is essential, don’t you Thomas?” Ava asks._

_“Wicked is good,” Thomas says._

“Ma,” Cleo tries.

“I will never be brave like you,” Ma says. “I am sorry Cleo-,”

_-Flashback-_

_“I can’t do this Thomas, I can’t do it anymore, we are setting them up to die, I wanted to help people, to save people, but not like this- not with this cost,” Marie says._

_“I know,” Thomas says, placing a hand on hers._

_“We have to do something,” Marie says._

_“We will.”_

“Marie, you shouldn’t apologise to me,” Cleo says.

“But I am a coward.”

“No, you aren’t,” Cleo says, “but even if you were, you are alive.”

_-Flashback-_

_“Teresa this isn’t humane, what we are doing, you have to see that,” Thomas says._

_“It is for the good of everyone,” Teresa defends._

_“They are just kids,” Thomas yells at her._

_“So are we, should we die because we aren’t willing to risk something for a chance to live?” Teresa asks. Thomas shakes his head._

_“You are just like her, you have built yourself so much in Ava’s image I barely even recognise you,” Thomas says._

_“You just feel this way because of Marie,” Teresa says. “You are blinded by her, by her doubts, by her choices. You know what Ava will do with her now, now she has stood against her.”_

_“I won’t let that happen,” Thomas says._

_“Why? Because you are in love with her?” Teresa snaps._

_“Yeah,” Thomas says._

_“Oh my god Thomas, she completely blinds you,” Teresa says._

_“So what if she does? She is right, you must know deep down that she is right, we can’t do this.”_

“But others aren’t,” Ma says, not meeting her eye.

“I care that you are alive, and if you need to be a coward, if you need to hide and run and not be brave then that is what you do, always,” Cleo says. “You do what it takes to stay alive, no matter what.”

_-Flashback-_

_“Where is Marie?” Thomas asks, Teresa doesn’t look up from the monitor. “Teresa where is Marie?”_

_“Reunited with people she felt were more important than the whole damn world,” Teresa says._

_“No,” Thomas goes to leave but Teresa grabs his arm._

_“I protected you Thomas, because I think without her here you will see clearly again, what we are trying to achieve here, it is important, it is essential. We have managed to create seven vials of cure since The Flare and we need to be realistic. This is the only way.”_

_“Teresa-,”_

_“I know you think you were in love with her, but you just have to let it go.”_

_“I don’t think I was in love with her Teresa, I am in love with her. I love her okay, and it may blind me, but I don’t care, because Marie is the only person in my goddamn life that I actually care about, the only thing.”_

_“The only thing?” Teresa asks._

_“I am undeniably, uncontrollably, irrevocably in love with her, and I will never apologise for that.”_

_“You are too late Thomas.”_

“We lost Alby, Cleo,” she says. “We lost so many people.”

“But I didn’t lose you,” Cleo says.

_-Flashback-_

_“We have made a lot of progress,” Ava says to Teresa as Thomas enters. “Good to see you today Thomas, feeling better?”_

_Thomas smiles, the same fake smile he has managed for months, he takes his seat but then he sees it. On the screens. ‘Siren Protocol Active.’ “What are you doing?” Thomas asks._

_“We have to assess immunity somehow, and if they won’t go into The Maze by themselves, they need a little encouragement,” Ava says._

_“You used Marie as bait,” Thomas says._

_“It was the only way to get A13 to pay attention,” Teresa says. He looks at them both for the longest moment before turning the protocol off. Teresa looks at him, fear in her eyes._

_“Oh Thomas…” Ava sighs. “Why did you have to go and do that?”_

“It could have been anyone, we could have lost Minho, or Chuck or Thomas or Newt-,”

“Stop it, you have to stop blaming yourself, this attack wasn’t your fault, what happened wasn’t your fault-,”

Thomas opens his eyes and bolts up right. “I remember, everything.”


	17. Chapter 16

Thomas and Ma make it out the tent just in time to see Cleo stride right up to Teresa and punch her in the face. Teresa hits the ground and all The Glader’s have Cleo’s attention. Newt moves to Thomas, knowing better than trying to step between Cleo and anything. “What happened?” Newt asks.   
“Thomas remembered everything,” Ma says, barely even present. She isn’t really aware of what’s happening. Thomas told her they did know each other, because they met back at W.C.K.D when they were both helping try to find a cure for the infection that devastated the world. Marie couldn’t hear any more words after that. She is barely absorbing it. Cleo however, no memories but filled with rage, heard what she needed to from Thomas’s memories, Teresa betrayed them all.   
“Those bastards who put you here Newt,” Thomas says.   
“We are those bastards,” Ma manages.  
Cleo looks over Teresa on her place on the floor, her hand hurts from the punch but she won’t let it show. “You,” Cleo says. Teresa tries to scramble to her feet but Cleo throws her back to the ground, “don’t move.”  
“Wow,” Gally says. “Do you want to maybe, calm down.”  
“Coming from you?” Cleo says, turning her back on Teresa for a second.   
“I am the irrational one,” Gally says. Cleo goes to quip something back but Teresa grabs a handful of her hair, yanking her back. Cleo twists around and grabs each of Teresa’s arms and shoves her.   
“Okay, maybe we should interrupt,” Thomas says. Ma shakes out of the daze and notices Cleo and Teresa fighting.   
“Cleo!” She yells. But Cleo can’t hear her over the anger, over the fighting. “Cleo!” Ma rushes over as Gally tries to pry Cleo off Teresa, picking her up and holding her still as she screams at Teresa who Minho is helping up.   
“She-,” Cleo starts.  
“She doesn’t remember,” Ma says. “She doesn’t remember.”  
“It was still her,” Cleo says. Ma stands directly in front of Cleo as Gally holds her still.  
“What about me?” she asks. Cleo looks at her, anger ebbing. “Do you want to hit me?”  
“Ma, you know what she did-,”   
“You know what I did,” Ma says back to her. “Are you going to hit me? You might as well Cleo, I feel it, I feel it all.” Cleo stops struggling and Gally, slowly, puts her down.   
Thomas stands up on a crate and all the Gladers turn to look at him. Teresa glares at Cleo, confused and defensive. Thomas tells them, not all of it, he leaves out Ma, and Teresa and himself, likely a direct result of Cleo’s own actions, but Minho looks at Ma, the pain, the guilt on her face, and he just knows, somehow. Newt looks at Cleo, who is stood next to Ma, Gally with a hand on her shoulder, and he sees it too, the truth, laid out plain and simple. Some of them were subjects in an experiment, and some of them rebelled against the system that put them there. But not all Gladers were equal.   
“So, if this is some kind of twisted test, we are being punished,” Gally says. Cleo and Ma look at him, worried about where this is going.   
“I don’t exactly think that’s how it works mate,” Newt says. Gally moves towards him, the anger clearly starting to build.   
“I wouldn’t call me mate,” Gally warns him. “And if we are being punished,” Gally continues, “we have to make it right.”  
“What is he…” Cleo starts, worry increasing.   
“We have to make things right with The Maze, we crossed boundaries, we did things we were supposed to do,” Gally says, not meeting Cleo’s eyes. “We have to make those things right.”  
“How are we supposed to appease a shucking Maze Gally?” Newt asks, half taking the piss, but Gally has an answer.   
“Oh, that is simple,” Gally says, pointing to Thomas and Teresa in turn. “We remove the problems. We give them back to The Maze.”  
“You can’t be serious,” Minho says.   
“Oh, I am serious,” Gally says. “They are the problem.”  
“Gally,” Cleo says. “You aren’t seriously suggesting we sacrifice them to The Maze?”  
“Two of theirs,” he gestures to the two dead grievers, “for two of ours.”

Ma screams her protests, alongside Newt and Minho trying to undo what the others are starting. Chuck watches on in horror as they put up posts to tie Thomas and Teresa to. “Gally, you don’t seriously think this is the way to handle this, you can’t be that barbaric,” Ma says. Gally leans closer to her.   
“Don’t think I didn’t pay attention to what you said to Cleo, Marie. You are just as guilty as them,” Gally starts, Cleo steps between them, staring Gally down.  
“You are stopping this, now,” Cleo says.   
“I wasn’t threatening her,” he tries to defend.   
“I know, if you so much as spoke a word wrong in Marie’s direction, you would lose your tongue,” Cleo says. “I mean this, all of it, it stops now.” Looking at him like this, so angry, so vengeful. Cleo hurts and she can’t understand why.   
“I am trying to preserve what we have,” Gally says. Cleo looks at him, lingering on his eyes for a moment, before looking away.   
“So am I,” she says her voice barely even a whisper. She grabs her bow from Gally in one quick movement and shoots at the ropes, a direct hit that cuts Thomas free. Minho following her lead cuts Teresa down. But that leaves the nine of them backed up against The Maze.   
Thomas looks at the others, by his and Teresa’s side, Cleo, holding onto Ma’s hand, Newt and Minho, blades in hand, Frypan, Winston and Chuck, all ready to fight. Ma notices the way Gally looks at Cleo, bow pointed at all of them. Something shifts, like a madness receding back into himself, like clarity falls back over his face. “Okay, okay,” Gally says. “We can figure something out.”  
“I don’t think we can,” Thomas says. He looks back at The Maze. “I think we have to go.”  
“You can’t go out there,” Gally says to Thomas but his eyes are on Cleo. “We have to stay.”  
“I think Thomas is right,” Cleo says. “I think we have to go.”  
Ma looks at Cleo, and all her fears, all her history, they are in her eyes. “Cleo I can’t,” she says.   
“It’s just a test,” Thomas says. Cleo glares at him.  
“Don’t,” Cleo warns him. “Don’t tell her shouldn’t be afraid. She is and she is allowed to be.” Cleo turns back to Ma. “But we need to leave.”  
“Cleo, I can’t,” she says, barely able to get the words out. “I can’t go into The Maze.”  
“I can’t leave you here,” Cleo says.   
“I can’t go into The Maze, Cleo,” she says. “I just- I can’t-,”  
“I am not leaving without you,” Cleo says. Newt looks at the two of them, knowing he also cannot leave without them. He won’t.  
“You aren’t leaving,” Gally says, all anger gone, only fear left in his voice. “You aren’t going into The Maze.”  
“No, we aren’t,” Cleo says, looking across The Glade. “I won’t make Ma do that…”  
“I am not leaving her,” Thomas says.   
“Neither am I,” Cleo says. “I just think I have a better way out.”


	18. Chapter 17

Ma watches Cleo as the opens the box. Cleo looks at Thomas. “We all came up in this, it has to lead somewhere, right?” Cleo asks him.   
“We have looked at the box, endlessly but we couldn’t find anything,” Minho reminds her.   
“Don’t you think I know that?” Cleo says “I have been here, longer than all of you, but we know things we didn’t know now.”  
“It get’s released and called with access codes,” Thomas says.   
“Do you know any of them?” Cleo asks jumping into the box.   
“They changed daily, besides that was above my clearance,” Thomas says, glancing at Ma.   
“I don’t,” Ma starts.   
“That’s okay,” Cleo reassures her. She holds out her hand to Ma. “You trust me?”  
“More than anything in this world,” she says. Both Newt and Thomas look at her in that moment. Thomas never told Marie about how much he loved her, about why his placement in The Maze was so interlinked with what W.C.K.D did to her, he thought it wouldn’t be fair.   
“I have an idea, it is stupid and it is reckless and it not guaranteed to work,” Cleo says.  
“My favourite kind of idea,” Minho says getting into the box.   
“It’s a lot stupid and quite dangerous,” Cleo adds. Thomas nods, getting in beside her.  
“Your ideas often are,” he jokes.   
“But it means we don’t need the access codes,” Cleo says. She tries her hardest to not glare at Teresa as she is helped in by Frypan. Only Ma stands outside the box, looking down at them, her friends, her heart, her home. “You okay to follow my lead Ma?” Cleo asks.   
Ma looks at Cleo, her knuckles slightly bloodied, her grey undershirt covered in dust and mud. Her eyes fixed on her, holding out her hand. Her Cleo, finding any way to keep Ma from The Maze.  
“Where you go, I go, Cleo. I will follow you into the great dark if you went,” she says taking her hand.   
“Don’t you dare,” Cleo responds, pulling her bow from her shoulder. Gally approaches with some of the other Gladers.   
“Cleo,” he says, and she draws her arrow. “You can’t go.”  
“I can’t stay,” she says. She pulls her string back and Gally takes a step back, thinking she is threatening him. She smiles a little, a sad smile. “You always were a little scared of me, weren’t you Gally?” She asks before releasing the arrow on the control box. He looks alarmed as the box starts to creek. “Goodbye Gally,” Cleo mouths before the box starts to fall. Cleo feels like a part of her is still in The Glade, even as they descend. Like she left a part of her there, next to the box, with the boy she refuses believe meant the words he said.   
The box moves down at speed, and Cleo holds tight to Ma’s hand. “This is the craziest thing you have ever pulled Cleo,” Newt says. Cleo laughs.   
“Maybe.”


	19. Chapter 18

The box hits the ground with a rattle and knocks Thomas off his feet. Cleo offers him a hand. “Didn’t you brace?” she asks, rhetorically.   
“More distracted on the possibility of dying,” he admits. Cleo rolls her eyes and looks at where they have ended up, there is a cage like door keeping them from a long grey corridor. She holds her hand out to the boys.   
“Someone give me something sharp,” she says. Newt passes her his blade and she uses it to unhinge the cage and then handing the blade back to him she kicks the metal out of place. She jumps down into the corridor and holds out a hand to Marie. “M’lady.”  
They walk down the long corridor slowly, unknown step after unknown step. “Do you recognise any of this Thomas?” Newt asks after having Thomas explain the entire situation to those of them that remain.   
“I was never down here, not my placement,” Thomas says.   
“Not your placement,” Newt repeats, sounding a little sarcastic. Ma wants to tell him to leave it out, but she is also slightly worried that it will reflect on her. She doesn’t remember any of it. But it doesn’t change what she did, who she was…   
“Does this place feel familiar?” Minho asks, his voice a low whisper. Ma looks at him, wondering why the question was directed at her, especially so lightly, especially from Minho. “Just me?” he asks.   
Cleo looks up at the cameras, the little red-light flickering, she raises her bow and with one arrow she strikes the camera down. “You might want to preserve those,” Teresa suggests. Cleo rolls her eyes and with a little bit of an attitude hands the bow and arrows to Minho.   
“Satisfied?” Cleo asks. Teresa sighs.   
“I understand why you are mad at me, I can’t believe I did all those things either,” Teresa says as they navigate corridor after corridor. “But I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember being that person.”  
“You still were that person,” Cleo says.   
“And yet you are so fast to defend Thomas, or Mari-,”  
“You keep Marie out of it,” Cleo warns, her voice barely even audible.   
“You trust Thomas’s memories of me being a bad guy, but hasn’t it occurred to you even for a second that his memories aren’t fallible,” Teresa says trying to defend herself. “Or maybe that his memories are subjective,” Cleo is ignoring her so Teresa grabs her arm, “look you attacked me the least you can do is listen to me.”  
“Go on, tell me that my friends, people who have saved my life, people who I know and care about, tell me why I am supposed to trust you, over them, go on, tell me,” Cleo says, pulling her aside.   
“Because you don’t know what you don’t know, we only know what Thomas thinks he knows,” she says.   
“It is all we have, and I don’t find it out of reach,” Cleo says. Teresa looks her up and down.   
“You haven’t liked me from the moment I arrived, you never gave me a chance to prove you wrong,” Teresa says.   
“I didn’t trust you,” Cleo says, “I still don’t, and I still have no reason to.”  
“Then why save me?” she asks. Cleo looks at her for a very long time.  
“I didn’t do that for you,” Cleo looks at Ma, who is talking to Minho.   
“Do you do anything that isn’t for her?”  
“Look, I love that girl more than you could ever comprehend, and I have a lot to make up for,” Cleo says. “And if I can help her forgive herself, then I will, if that means putting my feelings aside and saving you… so be it.”

They pass rooms filled with tanks and Cleo freezes up. The others look through the glass at the tanks and the large lab like rooms, that look like they haven’t been touched in a very long time. “You okay?” Newt asks. Cleo picks up on the sound of a distant alarm going off, but the haunting nature of the rooms grabs most of her attention.  
“I don’t think there is a simple answer to that,” Cleo says. “Everything we know, everything we had, it has all just been obliterated, and we are running around trying to make sense of it all. I am not sure I will be ‘alright’ for a while. I don’t know what is real anymore.”  
“We are,” Newt says, bumping her shoulder with his. “We are real.”  
“Unless we aren’t,” Cleo says. Newt looks at her, before taking her hand.   
“No,” he says. “We are real, we are definitely real.”  
“This place makes me feel unsteady,” Minho says reminding Newt and Cleo they aren’t alone and they take a step in different directions.   
“I don’t like how it feels either,” Cleo says. “Besides, we should keep moving.”

Cleo drops back to Ma, who is walking slowly, still recovering with the impact of the last few hours. Seeing so many of her friends dead, learning about herself, learning about W.C.K.D, about Thomas and Teresa, and leaving the only place she has ever known in her memory. Cleo completely understands why Ma is overwhelmed, distant, if Cleo had found herself in Ma’s situation, she doubts she would be acting any different. “You keeping up okay?” Thomas asks them.   
“We don’t even know where we are going,” Winston says.   
“We just need to keep moving,” Minho points out.   
“Keep moving,” Ma says, nodding.   
“Just keep moving.”

The W.C.K.D building felt like yet another Maze, and walking around many rooms on many floors for hours, they start to move towards something that feels like the right direction. A long white corridor that all the Glader’s couldn’t explain but all knew felt familiar, felt… unpleasant. The corridor is filled with doors labelled with letters and numbers. “A1,” Cleo reads.   
“They keep going up,” Ma says, pointing to A2, then A3. Thomas turns a little pale.   
“We need to keep moving,” he says. Minho puts his hand on the handle of room A7, and Thomas grabs his hands. “We keep moving,” he insists.   
Cleo is about to ask Thomas what it is he seems to want to keep from them when she feels a hand over her mouth and she is pulled into an unlabelled room.  
Newt turns around and see’s she is gone, with seemingly no trace. “Guys,” Newt says, voice raising. The alarms go off and the white light in the corridor turns into a flashing red. “Where the hell did Cleo go?”


	20. Chapter 19

Cleo looks up at the camera monitors, a wall of screens, filled with live footage. The screens, they show everything, they show The Glade, they show The Maze, they show the W.C.K.D facility. Anything that could have ever been considered private felt invaded by the pure existence of this surveillance room. The camera’s have no sound but it is clear on Monitor 48, the one showing the corridor she was just in, that they are all arguing. Cleo wants to scream, wants to yell, but even without the physical restriction, she doubts she could. Suddenly overwhelmed with the exact nature of her last few years of existence is painfully clear. They were used. All of them. So. Painfully. Used. She watches Thomas practically drag Newt down the corridor and forward. She doesn’t know what is being said, and she can’t see Ma on the screens, and she just watches them move from one monitor to the next and once they have moved further along. He lets her go.

Cleo is quick to spin on her heels and shove Gally, full force. “You motherfucker,” Cleo says.

“Seems like The Maze was less of a Maze than your journey,” he laughs. She looks at him, unbelieving.

“What do you think you are doing Gally?” She asks. Gally steps closer to her again but she steps back, leaning against the monitors. He looks hurt, like he was upset by the idea she thought he might hurt her. “I won’t ask again.”

“This place isn’t safe, Cleo,” he says.

“And The Maze was?” she asks.

“Almost, for a time,” he says.

“Gally, I know you aren’t that deluded,” Cleo says. She looks him up and down, he looks so angry, so absent, he doesn’t look like himself. He looks like the madness from earlier. He looks… lost.

“You were safe in The Maze,” he says. She laughs.

“No, Gally, I wasn’t, none of us were,” she says.

“You were,” he says.

“I don’t believe you think that,” she says.

“I would have never let anything happen to you,” he says. Cleo looks away and back to the monitors.

“Gally you have to stop it now,” she says.

“Stop what?” he asks.

“Whatever game you think this is, whatever you were trying to do, now, back then in the woods,” Cleo says.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“This game you play where you talk to me like…”

“Like I care?” he asks.

“Like you more than care,” Cleo says. “You have to stop, there isn’t room for games like that anymore. Not after all this.”

“For someone so smart Cleo, you have always been so goddamn ignorant,” he says, stepping back. Before she can realise what it is he is doing, or to move to stop him, he has shut her in the room and locked the door from the outside. Cleo tries the handle with force but the door doesn’t budge.

“Gally!” she yells. He leans on the door, back to it, to her.

“I’ll be back soon, I just have to get a few things,” he says.

“Gally, let me out, right now,” she insists.

“I can’t do that,” he says. “You’ll be safe here, until I get back.”

“Gally, please,” she says, a begging in her voice.

“I know that I am just a distraction,” Gally says placing his hand on the door, “that I am what you use to keep yourself in control of the things you can’t control. I am okay with that,” he pauses, “but you have to be okay with the fact that I am going to do, whatever I can, whatever I need to, to protect you Cleo. Even if you don’t like it, even if you don’t agree, even if you hate me. As long as you’re safe, that is all I care about. I know you may not feel that way about me but I think I have always felt that way about you,” it dawns on Cleo as she leans on the door, listening to him talk, “And I need to protect you, and in this case that means keeping you out of what is about to come. Because I don’t want to see you hurt, not ever.”

“Gally, don’t,” she says, but the words barely make it out.

“I think I am in love with you Cleo, and I am sorry,” he walks away and Cleo falls to sit on the cold concrete ground of the room, staring at the glow of the monitors. Part of her knew he wasn’t kidding, but she could never let herself believe him, because what was she if she did? She loved, of course Cleo loved, but it wasn’t Gally she loved, her heart was known to pull in different directions, but not for him. And if she admitted to herself that his feelings, as outlandish and stupid as they sounded when he spoke them, were honest, what did that mean for her? That she was willing to continue to use him as a distraction from the things she could never have, even knowing his feelings were real? She didn’t want to face that part of herself, the idea that she could let someone love her with nothing to give in return.

After a moment Cleo’s eyes land on the silver cabinets to the left of the monitors, and in need of a distraction she pulls herself to her feet and slowly walks over, opening each cabinet one by one. All filled with meaningless sheets and desk supplies until she finds the large one won’t open. Looking around she grabs a letter opener and pries the lock until it snaps. The cabinet has sectioned files, and a smaller draw in the top. She opens the draw and finds a lighter which she flicks on and off and on and off for a moment before putting it beside her on the desk. Rattling through the draw she also finds another vial, like the ones Teresa had, but it is smaller, much more like the one she wears around her neck, but it is empty. She looks at it closely and underneath the W.C.K.D engravement is a number. Number 3.

She starts pulling the files out in chunks. There are files on The Flare, on The Virus, on Cranks, there are files filled with newspaper clippings and research, she throws them behind her, disinterested, unaware of what those files contain. She feels like she is looking for something, she pulls out a box with the label ‘A’ on it. And the first file she pulls out is ‘A1.’ “Like the doors?” she asks herself, opening it. Inside she sees a picture of Teresa and her heart drops realizing exactly what she found. “The betrayer,” she reads aloud. She pulls out the next file, Thomas’s and the next and the next.

_A2 ‘Thomas’ To Be Killed By Group B. “Group B?” Cleo whispers to herself._

_A3 ‘Siggy’ The Friend._

_A5 ‘Newt’ The Glue._

_A7 ‘Minho’ The Leader._

_A8 ‘Chuck’ The Comfort._

_A9 ‘Gally’ The Rage._

_A13 ‘Cleo’ The Justification._ “Fuck you,” Cleo whispers.

_A15 ‘Winston’ The Resourceful._

The real names of all her friends are written in black and white in front of her, but it is like they wont stay in her head, the namesakes a little more but she doesn’t remember history enough to recognize most of them.

 _A19 ‘Marie’ The Unintentional Variable._ “Oh Ma,” Cleo whispers, looking at the photo of her, in her lab coat, so young, so hopefully, so unprepared for what is about to come. “This was never supposed to happen to you.”

She reads the files, and something sticks out to her. “Cleopatra,” she reads again, next to the namesake section of the file, but next to her birth name is also ‘Cleopatra.’

She starts to read about her family, remembering how Thomas called her ‘W.C.K.D family.’ “Mother,” she reads, “Ava Paige,” she pauses, “Cleopatra Paige…?” she continues reading “Father Aidan Cooper, sailor, deceased…” Like a memory she can hear a man singing to her, sea shanty’s, all the ones she can remember, but they are now in his voice, his soft voice, and she can hear a giggling that isn’t her own, it’s much younger than her, more shrill. The sound fades from her memory as quickly as it appeared. “Aunt, Mary Cooper, W.C.K.D scientist.” Cleo rolls her eyes. “So... all my family is questionable,” she mumbles. “Mary left W.C.K.D after disagreements about procedure and manufacture,” she reads the sidenote.

She puts the files down and reaches for another box listed ‘Protocols for A.’ The first folder she comes across is titled ‘Siren Call/Siren Protocol’ she opens it and the rage starts to build up in her.

_Memory removal increasing successful with A13, however she still responds to the familiar sounds of C12 crying._

She flips through more pages.

_A19 having developed an increasing relationship with C12 in A13’s absence, it appears also to have a connection to the sound that breaks through even memory removal._

She flips to the end.

_A1 thought of a way to utilize what seemed like an error and a fault in the memory of A13 and A19 today, we are developing a SIREN system. Sound. Internal. Retrieval. Emotion. Navigation system. Allowing us to control and manipulate through soundwaves._

“Siren call,” Cleo mumbles.

_The test was successful, A19 against all better judgment entered The Maze without stopping._

She throws the file across the room and a photo falls out, the photo is blurred in sections, but it seems to contain a lot of the Gladers, Cleo recognizes herself and Marie upfront, but between them in a smaller figure, that has been blurred. Next to the blur is the label ‘C12’.

Cleo picks up the boxes and boxes of files and starts to file them up. She reaches for the lighter and without even thinking about it, she sets them all on fire. A few pieces of paper slip from the files, escaping the flames and Cleo picks them up, individually throwing them on the fire, she lefts one burn just as she reads the words at the top, as soon as she sees Marie’s name and the title, she reaches for it, wanting to double check what she just read, what she glimpsed. The possibility of what that means. But it burns faster than she can catch it. The gravity of the choice she made starts to hit her and she puts the fire out, staring at the burnt paper and ash. One word singed around the edges floats down near her ‘immune.’ She looks at the mess she made, and tries to see if anything can be salvaged.

Nothing can. There are just bits and pieces, claims for immunity and not, but not connected to any one person, not identifiable. She picks up a few shreds, burnt words and phrases: ‘purpose’ ‘unknowing’ ‘trusting’ ‘lost’ ‘continuing to progress’ ‘tragic loss’ ‘trigger symptom’ ‘angry’ ‘likely to succeed’. She just looks at the mess and lets those shreds fall to the floor. “Oh Marie,” she whispers, “what happened? How…?”

She starts rumbling through the cabinets again, looking for something to clean her hands, and she comes across two things sat in a draw next to each other. She tucks one into her all in one, hidden by the undershirt but easy to access, and the other she holds tight in her hand. Her mind drifts back to the door, to being trapped in this room, while everyone one else it out there. While Gally is out there. Doing whatever it is, he might do.

She walks over to the monitors and tries to find them. She sees Ma on the screen and her heart jumps. She looks at her, for the longest time, Marie, her Marie, her beacon of hope, her reason to try, her best friend. She glances back at the burnt files, all the things she read, all the things she is not sure if she read. All the possibilities and all the pain. She thinks of Newt. She thinks of Thomas, of the choices Thomas made, of how much those files said he loved her. Her eyes flicker back to Marie, she looks scared and she is arguing, but Cleo doesn’t know what about… Cleo looks at her, the way she needs to protect Marie, she feels it in her bones. She knows what Marie feels about who she was, or who she might have been, she knows what Thomas told her was enough to make her question everything. In that moment, looking at Marie the same way Thomas must have looked at her for months, through a screen, just hoping, holding on to hope, that she would be okay. Cleo decides two things. Who they were does not matter and the most important one, Cleo would make sure no matter what happens Marie knew that, that no matter what she had done, no matter who she was, or what she did, Cleo would make sure Marie knew, that wasn’t her fault and nothing she has done could ever change the way Cleo looked at her. How Cleo saw her. She decides in this moment, right here, staring at her on the screen, she had to make sure Ma knew, that Cleo would never leave her behind and would never turn her back, no matter what. Even if it kills her.

The door opens and Cleo feels her hand go to her waist, but Gally’s face turns to hers and she instead focuses on a plan, quickly formulating in her head. “Look,” he says. “I know-,”

Cleo scans him, trying to figure out what he went looking for, what he wanted. Where had he been? She tunes back into his voice telling her he would be back soon, and she should not watch the cameras. “You don’t have to forgive me and I doubt you ever will, but you never were going to love me, so I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re safe,” he says.

“Gally,” Cleo says, realizing what she had to do. But she wanted to give him the chance.

“I’m leaving this room, I am finding the others and you aren’t going to stop me,” Cleo tells him.

“I can’t let you do that, because then either you will get hurt or you will leave and get hurt,” he says.

“Ma is out there,” Cleo says.

“Not just Ma,” he says, not meeting her eye.

“It isn’t about that,” Cleo says.

“But it sure helps you want to leave,” he says. “Things weren’t perfect but things… they were good, for the first time in a long time-,”

“Things weren’t good Gally, Ben died, Alby was dying-,”

“All because of Thomas,” he says.

“No,” Cleo says.

“And then Teresa arrived and the whole place fell apart,” he says. Cleo can’t actually argue with that sentiment so she says nothing. “But I can make it right, and you won’t let me.”

“I don’t know what you think you can do, but we are so close Gally, we are so close to getting out,” Cleo says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gally says. “Because out there, it isn’t any better.”

“You don’t know that,” Cleo says.

“Yes, I do,” Gally says. Cleo looks at him and then glances to the files she burnt. Maybe he found something she didn’t, in one these rooms… “But I can protect you from what is about to happen.”

Cleo grabs his arm as he tries to leave and he looks at her, surprised. “You’re an idiot Gally,” she says and kisses him. It distracts him for a moment, his hand moving from the door to her waist. Distracts him just enough for her to take the cuffs from her hand and attach him to the door handle. She clicks them shut and pulls back. He looks at her.

“Cleo,” he starts, the haze lifting and the reality setting back in.

“Sorry,” she says slipping out the door. She takes one last look at the monitors to figure out where the others had gone and then she takes one last look at Gally.

“Cleo, please.”

“Goodbye Gally.” 


	21. Chapter 20

Marie is still talking at Thomas but Thomas has stopped listening. He can’t argue with her, because he doesn’t have the heart. He spent so many months watching her from a distance, he spent so much time wondering what he could have done to protect her. Wondering if he had asked about her sooner, if from the first day she didn’t turn up, he just went with his instincts. He wonders if he could have protected her. He wonders if in keeping it a secret, he is protecting her still. “Ma, I think you need to calm down,” Teresa says. Newt looks at her with a look that could end her.  
“I don’t think you get to tell her how to feel,” Newt says. “And don’t think I don’t think it is a little suspicious that Cleo is your biggest issue and now no one knows where she is.”  
“You honestly think I could have done something?” Teresa asks.   
Cleo walks through the door and all eyes are on her, she looks back at them. “There was an issue, I dealt with it,” Cleo says as the others look at her and Ma hugs her. “I’m okay now.”  
“What happened, where did you go?” Thomas asks.   
“I got grabbed,” Cleo says. She is playing more attention to the giant screen that is starting to turn on. “Did anyone do that?” she asks.   
“By who?” Newt asks, incredibly concerned for Cleo’s wellbeing.   
“No one who is a problem anymore,” Cleo says, her voice barely even a mumble as a woman appears on the screen. The video is paused but Thomas recognizes her instantly.   
“Ava,” he mumbles.   
“Ava?” Cleo echoes before reaching for the panel and pressing some buttons, out of sheer luck the video starts playing.   
“Hello, my name is Doctor Ava Paige,” the woman on the recording says. Everyone’s eye are now fixed on the screen, Cleo’s miraculous reappearance suddenly less interesting to everyone, except Newt, who is still looking at her, looking for a sign, anything, that something is wrong, something happened. Concerned that he let something happen. “I’m director of operations here at the World Catastrophe Killzone Department.”  
“She was director,” Cleo whispers.   
“If you’re watching this that means you’ve successfully completed The Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you. But circumstances seem to have prevented it. I’m sure by now you must all be very confused. Angry. Frightened.” That was a fair assessment. In one hand Cleo was holding onto Ma, in the other she was digging her nails into her palm, a tight balled fist. “I can only assure you that everything that’s happened here, everything we’ve done to you. It was all done for a reason. You won’t remember but the sun has scorched our world, billions of lives lost to fire,” the screen plays footage of the disasters, but the reasoning’s aren’t making anything any better, the more Ava talks the deeper Cleo’s hatred sets. “Famine. Suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable. What came after was worse… We called it The Flare.” Cleo looks at Thomas, who is staring up at the screen, the same rage, the same wrath. “A deadly virus that attacks the brain, it is violent, unpredictable, incurable. Or so we thought. In time a new generation emerged that could survive the virus, suddenly there was a reason to hope for a cure, but finding it would not be easy. The young would have to be tested,” the files come back to Cleo’s mind, the red and the green stamps on each and every folder ‘immune’ ‘not immune’. “Even sacrificed inside harsh environments where their brain activity could be studied. All in an effort to understand what makes them different. What makes you different,” the words seem to surprise the others, but Cleo wants to scream, it’s basically a lie, even now Ava was deceiving them, they weren’t all immune. “You may not realise it but you’re very important. Unfortunately, your trials have only just begun. As you’ll no doubt soon discover not everyone agrees with our methods. Progress is slow, people are scared, it may be too late for us, for me. But not for you. The outside world awaits, remember,” Ava pulls a gun and Chuck and Marie look away. But Cleo doesn’t even flinch. “Wicked is good.”  
“Unbelievable,” Cleo mumbles.   
“She always thought she was doing what was right,” Thomas says, “but she didn’t care about the consequences, seemly no one did, not before,” he trails off to not talk about Ma.   
“But you fought back,” Minho says. “Why, if you were a part of this?”  
“Someone showed me what we were doing, not through the lens of progress or safety or reward, they just showed me the reality, and I cared enough to listen, and in doing so, I caused them a lot of pain,” Thomas says. “And I got myself put in The Maze.”  
“So, this footage is recent?” Cleo asks. “Thomas you said you remembered everything.”  
“I do, or at least I think I do,” he says.   
“You said I was W.C.K.D born and raised,” Cleo says. Newt looks at her, not faltered by this, but worried for her.   
“That’s what they told me,” he says.   
“Yet you failed to mention my mother was the face of this place,” Cleo says, staring back at the screen.  
“Wait, why do you think Ava was your mother?” Thomas asks.   
“She is, isn’t she?” Cleo asks.   
“I don’t know,” Thomas says. “I never asked, you were called Cleopatra Cooper-,”  
“I had my father’s name, you couldn’t know,” Cleo says. Everyone looking at her now, same worried eyes that Newt has been having this whole time.   
“Cleo?” Marie asks. “Why do you remember that?” She is looking her over, and over, like she is looking for a sting on a drowsy runner and she can barely stop her hands shaking.   
“I didn’t remember,” she says, suddenly realizing how it looks. “I don’t remember anything.”  
“Then how do you know that?” Teresa asks.   
“When I got grabbed, I got locked in a room, full of cameras, a surveillance room I think, I could see The Maze, all of it, I could see all the paths, how and when they change, I could see The Glade, I realized just how watched we were. In that room there were files, files on all of us, on this place. I read mine,” she says. “Name Cleopatra, namesake Pharaoh Cleopatra, Subject A13.”  
“Where are the files?” Minho asks.   
“I burned them,” she says.   
“You what?” Thomas asks. He moves towards her with speed and without hesitation Newt places an arm between them both.  
“You keep off her,” Newt warns him. Cleo keeps her eyes trained on Thomas, scared to look at Newt, scared to see his face, scared of what he might think of her now. How what he knows might change his view on her. Even more scared to look at Marie, likely the only other person in this room who would rather see those files burned than read them. She can’t know she was protecting her. She can’t know what she might have seen as the fire burned those pages. But Cleo can’t unsee that file. But Cleo can’t let Ma know, and Cleo has never been able to keep things from her. So, she doesn’t look at her.  
“Why would you do that?” Thomas demands. “We all had the right to know-,”  
“Those kids in those files, they aren’t us,” Cleo says. “No matter what side we were on Thomas, we are our own side now. They might be our past but they aren’t who we are Thomas, so why does it matter? We aren’t those people, I don’t remember being that person, she isn’t me, Stephen isn’t you, you are Thomas. You aren’t who that file would have you think. Marie isn’t who she was. We are all the right parts of ourselves, what happened to us,” Cleo looks at Teresa now, “all of us. It was wrong, it was manipulated and twisted and I don’t understand what kind of people can do that to children. But my mother did it to her own daughter. I am not my mother’s child. You are not that boy that they took in. we are not some orphans to be experimented on. We built ourselves from the ground up in The Glade, and I will be damned if some paper tries to take who we are today away from us. I don’t care if I was the girl who taught songs to the kids she didn’t know would be sent to die, I don’t care if Marie was the one person around with a conscious. I don’t care if Teresa stabbed me in the back, because that was then. We were all kids. We were all used. Every single one of us. Even her,” Teresa looks surprised, but Cleo isn’t doing it for her, forgiving Teresa, pardoning her, isn’t for her, it isn’t even for Cleo, it is wholly for Marie. “Adults told you that you were saving the world, and you believed them. You didn’t know any better. You looked up to a woman who was willing to sacrifice her own daughter, and she used you.” Cleo turns back to Thomas. “I burnt the files, every last one, because whatever was in them, didn’t matter.”  
“Easy for you to say, you read them,” Thomas says.   
“You have your memories mate, I would tread carefully,” Newt says.   
“You’ve always been so rational,” Minho says, looking at Cleo.   
“Can’t you see how rational I am?” Cleo asks. “We would not benefit from learning about our traumatic childhoods or our awful mistakes.”  
“So, you get to decide?” Fry asks.   
“Who died and made you go-,”  
“Guys, don’t,” Minho says cutting Winston off. “She made her choice, and we may not agree with it, but Cleo acts with our best interests in mind, we all know that.”  
“Thank you, Minho,” Cleo says. Ma has receded back into herself, lost in thought. Chuck, the only person not partaking in the arguing approaches her and takes her hand and places a tall daisy in it, she looks at the flower, the last piece of The Glade, in her hand. She smiles at him and he smiles back. Even in the middle of this mess, in all the destruction and pain and uncertainty. Even in all the chaos, there was Chuck, with his smile and flowers for the girls he adores. The girls who made The Glade home. 

_-Flashback-  
Cleo is sat with Ma around the campfire, Cleo is drinking and Ma is shaking her head as she watches her drink. “I don’t know how you manage that stuff,” Ma says. “It is-,”  
“An abomination,” Cleo suggests.   
“A disgrace to what passes for a drink,” Ma responds.   
“Gally’s recipe,” she reminds her with a smirk. “Makes sense.”  
“Why do you dislike him so much?” Ma asks.   
“Gally?” Cleo responds, laughter in her throat. “I don’t dislike him, he is a huge pain in my ass. He is stubborn and he is opinionated. Sometimes I don’t think we should have given him the right to speak.”  
“You need to stop drinking that,” Ma says, pushing the drink down and away from Cleo’s lips.   
“I don’t dislike Gally,” Cleo says, looking at him with some of the other Gladers. “I just don’t like him.”  
“Have you ever tried to?” Ma asks.  
“Unlike you, my sweet, I don’t feel the need to give everyone a chance to be good,” Cleo says.   
“I think everyone deserves a chance to be good,” Ma says. “We weren’t built evil, none of us.”  
“Some of us were just built difficult,” Cleo jokes nodding her head at Gally.  
“I think maybe he pushes your buttons because he doesn’t know what else to do, you are a complex being,” she says.   
“Not that complex,” Cleo says. She is about to speak again when both Marie and her hear it, the crying, coming from the hammocks.   
“Chuck,” they say in unison. The walk over and Chuck, having woken from a nightmare is tearful and scared. Cleo takes his hand and Marie gently strokes his hair as they both hum gently next to him. Marie starts to sing to him and Cleo smiles and listens to her, they stay until he falls back asleep.   
Quietly moving back to the campfire Cleo looks at Ma and Ma smiles back at her. “You know,” Cleo says. “I had a dream the other day, a horrid one, I don’t really remember it, but I thought I woke up, but then I heard the softest of voices and I was off somewhere calm and I opened my eyes and it was morning.”  
“You have nightmares a lot,” Ma says.   
“And you sing them away, don’t you?”  
“Almost every night.” _

“We don’t need to know who we were, we know who we are,” Newt says. “And I like who I am. I like who you guys are.”  
Ma looks up and a panic crosses her face, as she sees what everyone else is yet to notice. “Ma?” Cleo asks. “What is it?” Cleo follows her gaze and looks to the door. It is open again, the flashing red lights from the corridor seeping in, the sound a gentle buzz beneath the arguing. And in the doorway, gun in hand, is Gally.


	22. Chapter 21

“Gally,” Minho says, hand on Cleo’s bow.  
“How the hell did you get here?” Thomas asks.  
“I think there are more important questions at hand,” Cleo mumbles. Gally’s hands are shaking, the gun aimed in Teresa and Thomas’s direction.  
“Gally what do you think you are going to do with that?” Newt asks, eyes on the gun.  
“I am going to make things right,” he says. “You think you know, but you don’t know.”  
“What don’t we know Gally?” Cleo says. Newt’s gaze slips to her, he notices how calm she looks, how unsurprised. How Gally’s presence doesn’t phase her. He realizes then, what she meant when she said she was taken by someone who she thought would no longer be a problem. What he can’t figure out is why she tried to keep Gally’s name out of it. Newt cannot figure out if she was trying to protect them, herself or him, and the not knowing doesn’t sit well with him.  
“You just know what he told you, and you can’t trust him, not after the things he did,” Gally says.  
“I don’t know what you think I did,” Thomas says as Teresa moves herself down and away, keeping herself out of any possible line of fire. “But I remember it all, and I-,”  
“You remember it all?” Gally asks. “Then you know what you did. What she did, what you all did,” Gally’s eyes glance to Marie, but they are drawn back to Thomas. His focus is maddening. “You know what you are.”  
“I read the files Gally, no one here is beyond redemption,” Cleo says, “even you.”  
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Gally says. “And I told you before, I will do what I need to do.”  
“And I told you before, you don’t need to do anything like this,” Cleo says. Gally moves closer, gun trained on Thomas now. Teresa having moved to sit behind the big metal desk, hiding.  
“I know what I need to do, and I told you that you wouldn’t want to be here for this, I tried to keep you out of it,” Gally says. Gally looks at the screen, the video having gone back to the beginning image, Ava’s face clear on the board. He looks at her for a moment, not long enough for anyone to disarm him, but long enough for Ma to move in front of Thomas, for Minho to try to pull her back, but her to stop him with a simple look. Ma placing herself in Gally’s path is something both Newt and Cleo notice instantly, and without a second thought Cleo moves in front of Marie, keeping her eyes fixed on Gally at all times. Minho seeing the potential danger to Marie lifts Cleo’s bow.  
“Gally, put the gun down,” Cleo says, hands shaking now she moves in front of Ma. Newt watches them, the way Ma moved to protect Thomas, the way Thomas is now slowly taking her hand and moving to place himself in front of her. She looks at him, the way he tries to protect her in turn, confused. He looks back at her, softness in his face, a softness Marie doesn’t recognise but is obvious to Newt even at this distance, a softness that only comes with caring about someone more than yourself. Thomas taking Ma’s hand and moving her close to him but behind. Something in Newt’s mind clicks, something that should have clicked a long time ago. The way Ma looks at Thomas, it isn’t unlike the way Ma looks at him, in moments she doesn’t think he notices. Her first night in The Glade, she had those same hopeful bright eyes and he hasn’t given it any thought, because he had been thinking about Cleo, he was always thinking about Cleo. It occurred to him that Ma knew that, that Ma knew, like she always knew, and she said nothing. But the way Thomas looks at Ma, the way he protects her, the fierceness of that, it isn’t unlike the way Newt himself was with Cleo. Thomas loves Ma, maybe he always had, maybe his memories held more secrets than he was willing to share, maybe he thought that doing that was unfair. His eyes drift to Cleo again, who is staring down the barrel of Gally’s gun without fear on her face, except for her eyes, her eyes looked like they could be screaming.  
“He ruined everything, everything was fine,” Gally says, voice shaking.  
“Gally nothing was fine, we lived our lives trying desperately to find a way out, and we have, so give me the gun,” Cleo says, holding out her hand to him. Gally shakes her head, trying not to look at her. The way he avoids her gaze, the way he keeps fixed on Thomas, Newt can’t help but think it’s like a war he is fighting within himself.  
“It will all be so much worse now, we need to go back,” Gally says.  
“No, no we don’t go back, not ever,” Cleo says. “But… you can come with us, okay, you haven’t done anything you can’t come back from Gally.” Gally laughs.  
“Are you trying to protect me?” he says, his gun hand wavers, holding it directly at Thomas. “I am not who needs protecting.  
“Gally,” Cleo says, slowly untucking the item from the draw from her waistband.  
“Cleo, I wish you had just listened to me, things would be so much easier if you just listened to me, I am trying to protect you, protect everyone,” he says.  
“Gally, please, I need you to listen to me, I know you haven’t a day in your life-,”  
“That isn’t true,” he says. “You don’t know how untrue that is.”  
“Okay, okay, prove it, listen to me now,” Cleo pulls the gun out and holds it out straight. “Put the gun down.”  
“What the…” Minho whispers, lowing the bow slowly.  
“Gally I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I need you to put the gun down okay, we are out, we found a way out, we aren’t going back,” Cleo says.  
“I need you to move Cleo,” Gally says.  
“No,” Cleo says.  
“Just because I won’t hurt you doesn’t mean I won’t do what is necessary,” Gally says.  
“You are hurting me if you do this,” Cleo says. “You are hurting me right now.”  
“Why are you so sure you are protecting us?” Newt asks. “We aren’t your responsibility…”  
“You aren’t my responsibility,” Gally replies plainly. He doesn’t say it but the words linger in the emptiness in the air ‘Cleo is.’  
“Remember what I said Gally,” Cleo says.  
“I won’t hurt Ma,” he mumbles, almost in a trance. Ma’s eyes drift to Gally’s, ‘I won’t hurt Ma’ like a practiced sentiment, like a clause in an agreement she was never a part of. ‘I won’t hurt Ma’ like a way to tame the beast, like Gally thinks those words would make Cleo step down. Gally looks at Newt, who is staring at him, studying him, trying so hard to figure out the pieces that are missing, all the things that don’t make sense. “I won’t hurt the one you care about.” To everyone else that sounds like the same promise he just made, except Cleo knows that is an entirely different promise.  
“I care about them all,” Cleo says.  
“You just think you do, because you don’t remember,” Gally says.  
“Neither do you,” Cleo points out. She is looking at him, Gally. He has always been difficult. He was almost built for the world in The Maze, he was always okay to do what he needed to survive. He was physically strong, and emotionally cut off, he had two settings for the most part, ignorance and anger. Or at least that was always how Cleo had seen him, he was just a very angry boy with an attitude and a bone to pick. But she knew there was more to him now, as much as she had tried to keep Gally and her time with Gally separate, the more time she spent with him, the more she noticed how wrong she was about him. She noticed how yes, she was right about his attitude and his anger issues, but he was more than just those things. Gally was more than a sum of his parts, she saw a side to him she didn’t understand and she had chosen to try not to. She saw a remorse, a conscience, an affection in him she wouldn’t have believed was there if someone had told her, Gally had grown into something in her mind more than he was, and the boy in front of her was barely recognisable as Gally. As the Gally she had come to know. Her Gally.  
“Gally, please don’t make me hurt you,” Cleo says, her voice cracking. This grabs his attention; he draws his eyes away from Thomas and looks at her. She looks worried, worried in a way he has never seen her look before. “Gally please,” she begs.  
“I have to keep you safe; I have to keep us all safe,” Gally says.  
“No, this isn’t how you do that,” Cleo says, trying her best not to start crying. “Gally please, I am begging you, put the gun down,” she takes a step closer but he doesn’t waver.  
“Things were finally looking up Cleo, for the first time I can remember feeling like maybe things could be okay,” Gally says. She knows what he is saying even if it feels like a sucker punch to the stomach.  
“Gally, nothing was okay, it was an illusion, it wasn’t real, you know that,” Cleo says. Gally’s sad eyes look back at her.  
“It was real for me,” he says. “And then they ruined it.”  
“How?” Cleo asks, taking another step froward but lowering her gun.  
“Cleo, stay back,” Newt says, stepping forward to protect her.  
“He won’t hurt me,” Cleo says, taking another step forward, gun lowered completely to her side.  
“You don’t know that,” Newt says.  
“Yeah, yeah I do,” Cleo says. Newt looks at her as she approaches Gally and an odd thought occurs to him, a thought he wants to bury deep inside of him and never think of again, but watching him watch her, he almost wants to ask, but he doesn’t. He isn’t sure he wants to know.  
“Cleo we just need to go back,” he says. She places a hand on his arm and he slowly lowers his gun, keeping his eyes on her.  
“No,” she whispers. She places a hand on his face and he closes his eyes, but she doesn’t try to take the gun from him. “We don’t.”  
“We do,” he says. “And they can’t come back, they ruined it all.”  
“The Glade wasn’t a choice, it wasn’t a home, it was an experiment Gally, we need to leave,” Cleo says. He starts to raise the gun at Thomas again. “Gally, please, we are running out of time for you to listen to me. I don’t want to see you hurt.”  
“Why not?” he asks. Cleo doesn’t know how to answer that, she doesn’t quite understand herself. Because despite it all, despite the kidnapping and the craziness, some part of her genuinely doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t want to see him hurt. It is why she walked away from the fight in The Glade, why she took the box and walked away. It’s why she tried to lock him in the surveillance room instead of knocking him out or handing him over to the others. It is why she kept his name out of it even thinking she wouldn’t see him again. She doesn’t want to have to make that choice between saving them and saving him. Because she realises, as it dawns on her, she actually cares about him. She cares about him in a way she never thought she could care about someone like Gally. The feelings are so different to anything she has felt, that she wasn’t quick to recognise them. It isn’t like the rest of the boys where she is protecting her community, or like with Ma where she would die for her, or like with Newt, where she was willing to live for him. This was different, like she felt a responsibility to him because how much he cared for her, and how much she in turn had learned to care for him. For all her talks about distraction and disbalance in their relationship she hadn’t even considered the idea that her actions were a result of the feelings she was ignoring. The feelings that kept her protecting Gally after every poor choice he made. The idea that she, in all her stubbornness and all her pain, might just have looked back at him, even for a moment, the way he looked back at her.  
“Because I care what happens to you,” Cleo says honestly.  
“But not more than what happens to them,” he says. He raises his gun almost taking aim. Cleo grabs him, pulling him in close, he looks down at her, remembering the last time he was this close to her, only an hour before, when she had kissed him for what might be the last time. In that moment of distraction Cleo raises her gun quietly and pulls the trigger, shooting a bullet into Gally’s stomach and up. Gally drops his gun and it clatters to the ground. Discharging as it hits.  
“No, not more than what happens to them,” she says as he starts to slump to the ground. Ma chokes back a scream while the boys look around instinctively to see who has been shot, assuming it was Gally’s gun that unloaded. Only to turn back to Cleo, sat on the floor, slowly being soaked in Gally’s blood, with his body on her lap. Except Gally’s gun did shoot, and it hit someone. But as Chuck moves to check on Cleo, he notices the hole in his chest. Thomas and Marie turn to Chuck so fast that Newt is the first to notice Cleo is crying, and Ma is the only other person who notices at all.  
Cleo holds Gally as he looks up at her, unable to speak. She wipes one of her own tears from his cheek, as she does, she notices it, what she should have noticed earlier, the missing puzzle piece that makes it all add up. Why he wasn’t acting himself, why he was barely recognisable, why Cleo couldn’t talk him down. Why Gally had tried to keep her separate. The dark veins on his neck answer all those questions without a word. “Gally,” she whispers. “No, no, you’re-,”  
“Cleo,” he manages. “I…”  
“I’m sorry,” Cleo whispers as Gally starts to fade. “I am sorry.”  
“I…,” he tries again but he doesn’t manage it.  
“But I couldn’t let you hurt them. I just couldn’t” Cleo says.  
After what feels like forever to Cleo she turns around. Everyone crowding around Chuck, her heart sinks again, but she moves, almost emotionless over. Marie is crying, singing to him quietly, holding Chuck while Thomas presses down on the wound but he is gone, he is long gone and if Cleo knows it Ma must know it to. Ma looks up at Cleo and Cleo looks back at her, and with one look Marie just let’s go. Minho holds her as she cries and Cleo starts to sway and Newt catches her, holding her up. Newt looks at them both, Marie who was willing to die to save the ones she loved, the girl who thinks she is not brave, the girl who put herself between a gun and a madman. Sweet, precious Marie. And then Cleo, who was willing to kill to save the ones she loved, Cleo always so willing to fight, but now so haunted, so soaked in blood, barely able to stand. There were things that didn’t add up to Newt, things that he wanted answers to and things he didn’t, but he knew there was a time and a place, and as he looked down at all they had lost, he knew this wasn’t it. But out of all of them, it was Minho that noticed the most. Minho that noticed the way Newt looked at Cleo, the way Cleo refused to look back, the way that Ma had watched them both. Minho had noticed what Marie and Thomas had shared, and most importantly to Minho, most striking, the way Marie had started to look back at Thomas, like remembering, like something in her knew something she didn’t know yet.  
“We need to go,” Teresa says. “We need to leave.”  
“Don’t,” Minho warns her, protecting Ma. He was always protecting Ma, in all the ways he could. Marie takes the flower Chuck gave her and places it on his body, like a goodbye, and she turns to look at Cleo who has buried her head in Newt’s shoulder. Marie wants to ask her how she is doing, she wants to look after her, she wants to apologise for what she had to do. Marie would never have wanted Cleo to have to hurt anyone… yet again kill them. But she can’t get the words out. She can barely move.  
“Cleo,” she manages as a door opens and a while light of the outside temporarily blinds them all.


	23. Chapter 22

Thomas is pulled away by the men kicking and screaming from Chuck’s body. The flower now placed on his chest entirely soaked through with blood. Cleo can’t bare to look behind her as she walks into The Scorch, but she takes Marie’s hand in hers as they are guided to the helicopter. Cleo isn’t even listening as the men explain who they are and where they are going. Cleo isn’t aware what is happening for a very long time, before Thomas turns to her.  
“I didn’t know,” he says. “I promise you I didn’t know.”  
“About Ava?” she asks. Thomas nods.  
“You were just another person here, just someone else I saw day in day out, I didn’t really notice you,” Thomas nods to Marie who is sat with Newt, at a distance where they can’t hear them talk, but next to the doors Cleo doubts anyone would be able to eavesdrop if they tried. “But she did. You and her and…” his voice trails off, deciding that telling her about her past when there is nothing that she can do to change it, is against her exact wishes and considering what she just had to do to protect him, he won’t but that on her.  
“And you noticed her,” Cleo says.  
“I noticed her, I noticed her every moment she was in the room, every day, she was the best part of waking up and the worst part of going to sleep, se made me realise my own faults but not in a way that was vicious, she only wanted what was best for everyone, she genuinely cared. She lost everyone to The Flare, she had the purest intentions, but W.C.K.D they will twist those, they will take everything you love and they will use it against you, and you will obey or you will break.”  
“You were in love with her,” she says. “You still are, aren’t you?”  
“Yeah, I am,” he says. “There is nothing in this world that could change how I feel about her, even taking away all my memories, I still knew her, I still loved her, even then.”  
“Even then,” Cleo says, her eyes on Newt.  
“I know I am not alone in that,” he says. Suddenly concerned he means her feelings for Newt she looks at him, alarmed. “Marie,” he says, “you didn’t remember how close you two were when you were at W.C.K.D but you took her in straight away. Your heart remembered her even if your mind didn’t. you cared for her so deeply that nothing could take that away… and she felt that way about you, you were the final straw, the tipping point. She couldn’t bare to see what they did to you and she was working against it. It’s why she got put in The Maze.”  
“Because of me…”  
“For you.”  
“That doesn’t make it any better.”  
“I never thanked you.”  
“For what? Saving your life, defending you, stopping you from getting yourself killed?”  
“For her,” he says. “I never got to thank you for her.”  
“You owe me a lot of thanks Thomas, but not for her, never for her.”  
“You and I are the same, aren’t we?”  
“Anything is justifiable if it is to protect Marie?”  
“Anything is justifiable if it is to protect Marie.”  
“It must have been hard for you, watching her in there, as long as you did, not able to do anything.”  
“I have never faced anything so hard in my life.”  
Minho is staring at the floor of the helicopter, he can’t look up because everywhere he looks he gets a tight feeling in his chest, he doesn’t want to call it jealousy, but it is. Minho doesn’t understand it. No one ever spoke a word about it, no one dared, but there was this sort of quiet suggestion that Cleo was off bounds not because of the rules, but because her heart already belonged to someone, to Newt. Minho knew Marie, Minho knew Marie better than maybe he knew anything, and he couldn’t understand why, even in this world, Marie would let herself love someone who didn’t look at her like she was everything good left in the world, like she deserved. Newt doesn’t look at her the way Minho looks at her, and Minho was always okay admiring from a far, because at least Ma was happy, at least she was safe. She had Cleo and maybe that was all Marie needed, but Minho couldn’t help but wonder what little Marie must value her love if she would throw it at someone who doesn’t return it, so easily. And then there was Thomas, and Minho didn’t want to start comparing himself to that so he just didn’t look up. Not even once.  
After a while Cleo moves to take Newts place next to Marie and Newt moves to sit with Thomas. “You holding up okay mate?” Newt asks Thomas.  
“I… don’t know.”  
Cleo puts her arm around Marie and Marie leans into her. “Cleo,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”  
“You don’t owe me any apologies Ma,” she says, “not now, not ever.”  
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that,” she says.  
“I had to make a choice Ma, and I choose you, I will always choose you.” Cleo whispers.  
“I never wanted any of this,” she says. Cleo kisses her head gently, stroking her hair.  
“I know,” she whispers. “But you are Marie, you are my Marie and whatever it takes, I will never let anything happen to you, you know that.”  
“Even if you have to get blood on your hands,” she says, “I never wanted that for you.”  
She wants to tell her that she would kill armies, without blinking. She wants to tell her she would burn the world, but she knows that isn’t what Marie needs to hear, or what she needs to hear. She knows violence isn’t the language Marie needs to hear her speak in right now, it never really is. But also in telling her that she would be faced with having to explain the real reason she is so torn up, the real reason she lost herself in pulling that trigger. She had feelings for Gally. Cleo felt it best not to discuss that right now. As Gally laid dead on the W.C.K.D floor and all Cleo had done she had done for Marie. She felt it best not to talk about it. Not to think about it. About the trade she made, about the choices she made. About what she was willing to leave behind. Cleo thought of everything Ma sacrificed for her, for everyone, everything she went through… everything she might have went through. And she decides to keep her pain to herself, a little while longer.  
“You read my file, didn’t you?” she asks, Cleo, turning her head to look up at her. Cleo nods. “So you read all the things, the awful things, I must have helped do…”  
“Ma,” she strokes her hair back, “don’t talk like that, okay. I love you, without exception, without condition, without retraction. I am yours until the day I die, and nothing you’ve done or could do would change that, besides… you aren’t that person, and even if you are, you are the hero in my story.”  
“I don’t understand, you know what I did,” Ma says not able to meet her eyes. Cleo pulls her close to her, basically pressing her face into hers.  
“Ma, you aren’t who you were, besides,” she takes her hand, “we make it through this together, don’t we? I am not innocent,” she looks at the dried blood on her hands, “I am not forgivable either.”  
“Together,” Ma sighs, “hand in unforgivable hand?”  
“Hand in unforgivable hand.”


End file.
